The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4

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[7] {15}[Compare--

"One little marshy spark of flame."

_Def. Trans_., Part I. sc. I.

Koelbing notes six other allusions in Byron's works to the
"will-o'-the-wisp," but omits the line in the "Incantation" (_Manfred_,
act i. sc. I, line 195)--

"And the wisp on the morass,"

which the Italian translator would have rendered "bundle of straw" (see
Letter to Hoppner, February 28, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 204, _note 2,
et post_ p. 92, note 1).]

[8] [This "...is not exactly so; the third column does not seem to have
ever had a ring, but the traces of these rings are very visible in the
two first columns from the entrance, although the rings have been
removed; and on the three last we find the rings still riveted on the
darkest side of the pillars where they face the rock, so that the
unfortunate prisoners chained there were even bereft of light.... The
fifth column is said to be the one to which Bonivard was chained during
four years. Byron's name is carved on the southern side of the third
column ... on the seventh tympanum, at about 1 metre 45 from the lower
edge of the shaft." Much has been written for and against the
authenticity of this inscription, which, according to M. Naef, the
author of _Guide_, was carved by Byron himself, "with an antique
ivory-mounted stiletto, which had been discovered in the duke's
room."--_Guide, etc._, pp. 39-42. The inscription was _in situ_ as early
as August 22, 1820, as Mr. Richard Edgcumbe points out (_Notes and
Queries_, Series V. xi. 487).]

[d] {16}--_pined in heart_.--[Editions 1816-1837.]

[9] [Compare, for similarity of sound--

"Thou tree of covert and of rest
For this young Bird that is distrest."

_Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,_ by W. Wordsworth,
_Works,_ 1889, p. 364.

Compare, too--

"She came into the cave, but it was merely
To see her bird reposing in his nest."

_Don Juan,_ Canto II. stanza clxviii. lines 3, 4.]

[10] {17}[Compare--

"Those polar summers, _all_ sun, and some ice."

_Don Juan_, Canto XII. stanza lxxii. line 8.]

[11] {18} [Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, Part IV. chap. i. sect. 9,
"Touching the Grand Style," 1888, iii. 8, 9) criticizes these five lines
107-111, and points out that, alike in respect of accuracy and
inaccuracy of detail, they fulfil the conditions of poetry in
contradistinction to history. "Instead," he concludes, "of finding, as
we expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission
of details, we find it consisting entirely in the addition of details;
and instead of it being characterized by regard only of the invariable,
we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is
singular and particular!"]

[12] The Chateau de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve,
which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are
the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie
and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill
behind, is a torrent: below it, washing its walls, the lake has been
fathomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range
of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of
state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age,
on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In
the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in
the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered:
in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was
confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has
fixed the catastrophe of his Heloise, in the rescue of one of her
children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness
produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The chateau is
large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are
white.

["Le chateau de Chillon ... est situe dans le lac sur un rocher qui
forme une presqu'isle, et autour du quel j'ai vu sonder a plus de cent
cinquante brasses qui font pres de huit cents pieds, sans trouver le
fond. On a creuse dans ce rocher des caves et des cuisines au-dessous du
niveau de l'eau, qu'on y introduit, quand on veut, par des robinets.
C'est-la que fut detenu six ans prisonnier Francois Bonnivard ... homme
d'un merite rare, d'une droiture et d'une fermete a toute epreuve, ami
de la liberte, quoique Savoyard, et tolerant quoique pretre," etc. (_La
Nouvelle Heloise_, par J. J. Rousseau, partie vi. Lettre 8, note (1);
_Oeuvres completes_, 1836, ii. 356, note 1).

With Byron's description of Chillon, compare that of Shelley, contained
in a letter to Peacock, dated July 12, 1816 (_Prose Works of P. B.
Shelley_, 1880, ii. 171, sq.). The belief or tradition that Bonivard's
prison is "below the surface of the lake," for which Shelley as well as
Rousseau is responsible, but which Byron only records in verse, may be
traced to a statement attributed to Bonivard himself, who says
(_Memoires, etc._, 1843, iv. 268) that the commandant thrust him "en
unes croctes desquelles le fond estoit plus bas que le lac sur lequel
Chillon estoit citue." As a matter of fact, "the level [of _les
souterrains_] is now three metres higher than the level of the water,
and even if we take off the difference arising from the fact that the
level of the lake was once much higher, and that the floor of the halls
has been raised, still the halls must originally have been built about
two metres above the surface of the lake."--_Guide_, etc., pp. 28, 29.]

[13] {19}[The "real Bonivard" might have indulged in and, perhaps,
prided himself on this feeble and irritating _paronomasy_; but nothing
can be less in keeping with the bearing and behaviour of the tragic and
sententious Bonivard of the legend.]

[14] [Compare--

"...I'm a forester and breather
Of the steep mountain-tops."

_Werner_, act iv. sc. 1.]

[e] _But why withhold the blow?--he died_. [MS.]

[f] {20}_To break or bite_----.--[MS.]

[15] [Compare "With the aid of Suleiman's ataghan and my own sabre, we
scooped a shallow grave upon the spot which Darvell had indicated" (_A
fragment of a Novel by Byron, Letters,_ 1899, iii. Appendix IX. p.
452).]

[16] [Compare--

"And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."

_Christabel_, by S. T. Coleridge, part ii. lines 412, 413.]

[17] [It is said that his parents handed him over to the care of his
uncle, Jean-Aime Bonivard, when he was still an infant, and it is denied
that his father was "literally put to death."]

[18] {21}[Koelbing quotes parallel uses of the same expression in
_Werner_, act iv. sc. 1; Churchill's _The Times_, line 341, etc.; but
does not give the original--

"But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which, withering on the virgin-thorn," etc.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i. sc. i, lines 76, 77.]

[19] [Compare--

"The first, last look of Death revealed."

_The Giaour_, line 89, note 2.

Byron was a connoisseur of the incidents and by-play of "sudden death,"
so much so that Goethe was under the impression that he had been guilty
of a venial murder (see his review of _Manfred_ in his paper _Kunst and
Alterthum_, _Letters_, 1901, v. 506, 507). A year after these lines were
written, when he was at Rome (Letter to Murray, May 30, 1817), he saw
three robbers guillotined, and observed himself and them from a
psychological standpoint.

"The ghastly bed of Sin" (lines 182, 183) may be a reminiscence of the
death-bed of Lord Falkland (_English Bards_, etc., lines 680-686;
_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 351, note 2).]

[20] {22}[Compare--

"And yet I could not die."

_Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. line 262.]

[21] {23}[Compare--

"I wept not; so all stone I felt within."

Dante's _Inferno_, xxxiii. 47 (Cary's translation).]

[22] {24}[Compare "Song by Glycine"--

"A sunny shaft did I behold,
From sky to earth it slanted;
And poised therein a bird so bold--
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted," etc.

_Zapolya_, by S. T. Coleridge, act ii. sc. 1.]

[23] [Compare--

"When Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate."

_Ruth_, by W. Wordsworth, _Works_, 1889, p. 121.]

[24] ["The souls of the blessed are supposed by some of the Mahommedans
to animate green birds in the groves of Paradise."--Note to Southey's
_Thalaba_, bk. xi. stanza 5, line 13.]

[25] {25}[Compare--

"I wandered lonely as a cloud."

_Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 205.]

[26] [Compare--

"Yet some did think that he had little business here."

_Ibid_., p. 183.

Compare, too, _The Dream_, line 166, _vide post_, p. 39--

"What business had they there at such a time?"]

[27] {26}[Compare--

"He sighed, and turned his eyes, because he knew
'Twas but a larger jail he had in view."

Dryden, _Palamon and Arcite_, bk. i. lines 216, 217.

Compare, too--

"An exile----
Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong."

_Prophecy of Dante_, iv. 131, 132.]

[28] [Compare--

"The harvest of a quiet eye."

_A Poet's Epitaph_, line 51, _Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 116.]

[g]

_I saw them with their lake below,_
_And their three thousand years of snow_.--[MS.]

[29] [This, according to Ruskin's canon, may be a poetical inaccuracy.
The Rhone is blue below the lake at Geneva, but "les embouchures" at
Villeneuve are muddy and discoloured.]

[30] [Villeneuve.]

[31] Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from
Chillon, is a very small island [Ile de Paix]; the only one I could
perceive in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference.
It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its
singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.

[32] {27}[Compare--

"Of Silver How, and Grasmere's peaceful lake,
And one green island."

_Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 220.]

[33] [Compare the Ancient Mariner on the water-snakes--

"O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare,"

_Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. lines 282, 283.

There is, too, in these lines (352-354), as in many others, an echo of
Wordsworth. In the _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_ it is told how
the "two undying fish" of Bowscale Tarn, and the "eagle lord of land and
sea" ministered to the shepherd-lord. It was no wonder that the critics
of 1816 animadverted on Byron's "communion" with the Lakers. "He could
not," writes a Critical Reviewer (Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581),
"carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few, we will venture to
predict, are found the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr.
Wordsworth.... Such is the effect of reading and enjoying the poetry of
Mr. W., to whose system (ridiculed alike by those who could not, and who
would not understand it) Lord Byron, it is evident, has become a tardy
convert, and of whose merits in the poems on our table we have a silent
but unequivocal acknowledgment."]

[34] {28}[Compare the well-known lines in Lovelace's "To Althea--From
Prison"--

"Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage."]

[h] Here follows in the MS.--

_Nor stew I of my subjects one_--
/ _hath so little_ \
_What sovereign_ < > _done?_
\ _yet so much hath_ /

POEMS OF

JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1816.

THE DREAM.

INTRODUCTION TO _THE DREAM_

_The Dream_, which was written at Diodati in July, 1816 (probably
towards the end of the month; see letters to Murray and Rogers, dated
July 22 and July 29), is a retrospect and an apology. It consists of an
opening stanza, or section, on the psychology of dreams, followed by
some episodes or dissolving views, which purport to be the successive
stages of a dream. Stanzas ii. and iii. are descriptive of Annesley Park
and Hall, and detail two incidents of Byron's boyish passion for his
neighbour and distant cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth. The first scene takes
place on the top of "Diadem Hill," the "cape" or rounded spur of the
long ridge of Howatt Hill, which lies about half a mile to the
south-east of the hall. The time is the late summer or early autumn of
1803. The "Sun of Love" has not yet declined, and the "one beloved face"
is still shining on him; but he is beginning to realize that "her sighs
are not for him," that she is out of his reach. The second scene, which
belongs to the following year, 1804, is laid in the "antique oratory"
(not, as Moore explains, another name for the hall, but "a small room
built over the porch, or principal entrance of the hall, and looking
into the courtyard"), and depicts the final parting. His doom has been
pronounced, and his first impulse is to pen some passionate reproach,
but his heart fails him at the sight of the "Lady of his Love," serene
and smiling, and he bids her farewell with smiles on his lips, but grief
unutterable in his heart.

Stanza iv. recalls an incident of his Eastern travels--a halt at noonday
by a fountain on the route from Smyrna to Ephesus (March 14, 1810), "the
heads of camels were seen peeping above the tall reeds" (see _Travels in
Albania_, 1858, ii. 59.).

The next episode (stanza v.) depicts an imaginary scene, suggested,
perhaps, by some rumour or more definite assurance, and often present to
his "inward eye"--the "one beloved," the mother of a happy family, but
herself a forsaken and unhappy wife.

He passes on (stanza vi.) to his marriage in 1815, his bride "gentle"
and "fair," but _not_ the "one beloved,"--to the wedding day, when he
stood before an altar, "like one forlorn," confused by the sudden vision
of the past fulfilled with Love the "indestructible"!

In stanza vii. he records and analyzes the "sickness of the soul," the
so-called "phrenzy" which had overtaken and changed the "Lady of his
Love;" and, finally (stanza viii.), he lays bare the desolation of his
heart, depicting himself as at enmity with mankind, but submissive to
Nature, the "Spirit of the Universe," if, haply, there may be "reserved
a blessing" even for him, the rejected and the outlaw.

Moore says (_Life_, p. 321) that _The Dream_ cost its author "many a
tear in writing"--being, indeed, the most mournful as well as
picturesque "story of a wandering life" that ever came from the pen and
heart of man. In his _Real Lord Byron_ (i. 284) Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson
maintains that _The Dream_ "has no autobiographical value.... A dream it
was, as false as dreams usually are." The character of the poet, as well
as the poem itself, suggests another criticism. Byron suffered or
enjoyed vivid dreams, and, as poets will, shaped his dreams, consciously
and of set purpose, to the furtherance of his art, but nothing
concerning himself interested him or awoke the slumbering chord which
was not based on actual fact. If the meeting on the "cape crowned with a
peculiar diadem," and the final interview in the "antique oratory" had
never happened or happened otherwise; if he had not "quivered" during
the wedding service at Seaham; if a vision of Annesley and Mary Chaworth
had not flashed into his soul,--he would have taken no pleasure in
devising these incidents and details, and weaving them into a fictitious
narrative. He took himself too seriously to invent and dwell lovingly on
the acts and sufferings of an imaginary Byron. The Dream is
"picturesque" because the accidents of the scenes are dealt with not
historically, but artistically, are omitted or supplied according to
poetical licence; but the record is neither false, nor imaginary, nor
unusual. On the other hand, the composition and publication of the poem
must be set down, if not to malice and revenge, at least to the
preoccupancy of chagrin and remorse, which compelled him to take the
world into his confidence, cost what it might to his own self-respect,
or the peace of mind and happiness of others.

For an elaborate description of Annesley Hall and Park, written with a
view to illustrate _The Dream_, see "A Byronian Ramble," Part II., the
_Athenaeum_, August 30, 1834. See, too, an interesting quotation from Sir
Richard Phillips' unfinished _Personal Tour through the United Kingdom_,
published in the _Mirror_, 1828, vol. xii. p. 286; _Abbotsford and
Newstead Abbey_, by Washington Irving, 1835, p. 191, _seq._; _The House
and Grave of Byron_, 1855; and an article in _Lippincott's Magazine_,
1876, vol. xviii. pp. 637, _seq._

THE DREAM

I.

Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their developement have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of Joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being;[35] they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time, 10
And look like heralds of Eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past,--they speak
Like Sibyls of the future; they have power--
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not--what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,[36]
The dread of vanished shadows--Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?--What are they?
Creations of the mind?--The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own 20
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.[37]
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep--for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.[38]

II.

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such, 30
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs;--the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing--the one on all that was beneath 40
Fair as herself--but the Boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young--yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The Maid was on the eve of Womanhood;
The Boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him: he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away; 50
He had no breath, no being, but in hers;
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,[i][39]
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects:--he had ceased
To live within himself; she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,[40]
Which terminated all: upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,[41]
And his cheek change tempestuously--his heart 60
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother--but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.[42]--It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not--and why?
Time taught him a deep answer--when she loved 70
Another: even _now_ she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed[43]
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.

III.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake;--he was alone,[44]
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon 80
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands, and shook as 'twere
With a convulsion--then arose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet 90
She knew she was by him beloved--she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge,[45] that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu, 100
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.[46]

IV.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his Soul drank their sunbeams: he was girt
With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
Himself like what he had been; on the sea 110
And on the shore he was a wanderer;
There was a mass of many images
Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
A part of all; and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fastened near a fountain; and a man 120
Clad in a flowing garb did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.[47]

V.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love was wed with One
Who did not love her better:--in her home,
A thousand leagues from his,--her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy, 130
Daughters and sons of Beauty,--but behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.[48]
What could her grief be?--she had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be?--she had loved him not, 140
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which preyed
Upon her mind--a spectre of the past.

VI.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was returned.--I saw him stand
Before an Altar--with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight[49] of his Boyhood;--as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock[50] 150
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then--
As in that hour--a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced,--and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been--
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, 160
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour
And her who was his destiny, came back
And thrust themselves between him and the light:
What business had they there at such a time?