Would the sycophants of him In his native darkness share? Hearts like those which still are thine? My chief, my king, my friend, adieu! Never did I droop before; Never to my sovereign sue, As his foes I now implore: All I ask is to divide Every peril he must brave; Sharing by the hero's side His fall, his exile, and his grave. ON THE STAR OF "THE LEGION OF HONOUR." [FROM THE FRENCH.] STAR of the brave!-whose beam hath shed Souls of slain heroes form'd thy rays; Like lava roll'd thy stream of blood, One tint was of the sunbeam's dyes; Star of the brave! thy ray is pale, And Freedom hallows with her tread For beautiful in death are they Who proudly fall in her array; And soon, oh goddess! may we be For evermore with them or thee! NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL. [FROM THE FRENCH.] FAREWELL to the land where the gloom of my glory Farewell to thee, France! when thy diadem crown'd me, blasted, Had still soar'd with eyes fix'd on victory's sun! Farewell to thee, France!-but when Liberty rallies Then turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining- But neither beat, nor frost, nor thunder The marks of that which once hath been." FARE thee well! and if for ever, Still for ever, fare thee well: Even though unforgiving, never Would that breast were bared before thee Which thou ne'er canst know again: crossed the Alps, in September. It was then that he signified his wish to have the extract in question affixed to all future copies of his stanzas; and the reader, who might have doubted Mr. Moore's assertion in his Life, that Lord Byron's Would that breast, by thee glanced over, Every inmost thought could show! Then thou wouldst at last discover 'Twas not well to spurn it so. Though the world for this commend thee- Though my many faults defaced me, Could no other arm be found, Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not; Love may sink by slow decay, But by sudden wrench, believe not Hearts can thus be torn away: Still thine own its life retaineth Still must mine, though bleeding, beat; And the undying thought which paineth Is-that we no more may meet. These are words of deeper sorrow Both shall live, but every morrow hopes of an ultimate reconciliation with his Lady survived even the unsuccessful negotiation prompted by the kind interference of Madame de Stael, when he visited her at Copet, will probably now consider the selection and date of this motto, as circumstances strongly corroborative of the biographer's statement: "A dreary sea now flows between But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, The marks of that which once hath been!" The saddest period of Lord Byron's life was also, we see, one of the busiest. His refuge and solace were ever in the practice of his art; and the rapidity with which he conti. nued to pour out verses at this melancholy time, if it tended to prolong some of his personal annoyances, by giving malevolent critics fresh pretences for making his private affairs the subject of public discussion, has certainly been in no respect injurious to his poetical reputation. It was in reviewing some of the performances published about this time, that Sir Walter Scott threw out the following observations, not the less interesting and instructive for certain modest allusions to that great author's own experiences as a popular poet: "We are sometimes," he says, " tempted to blame the timidity of those poets, who, possessing powers to arrest the admiration of the public, are yet too much afraid of censure to come frequently forward, and thus defraud themselves of their fame, and the public of the delight which they might afford us. Where success has been unexpectedly, and perhaps undeservedly, obtained by the capricious vote of fashion, it may be well for the adventurer to draw his stake and leave the game, as every succeeding hazard will diminish the chance of his rising a winner. But they cater ill for the public, and give indifferent advice to the poet,-supposing him possessed of the highest qualities of his art,-who do not advise him to labour, while the laurel around his brows yet retains its freshness. Sketches from Lord Byron are more valuable than finished pictures from others; nor are we at all sure, that any labour which he might bestow in revisal would not rather efface than refine those outlines of striking and powerful originality which they exhibit, when flung rough from the hand of the master. No one would have wished to condemn Michael Angelo to work upon a single block of marble, until he had satisfied, in every point, the petty criticism of that Pope, who, neglecting the sublime and magnificent character and attitude of his Moses, descended to blame a wrinkle in the fold of the gar ment. "Should it be urged that, in thus stimulating genius to unsparing exertion, we encourage carelessness and hurry in the youthful candidates for literary distinction, we answer, it is not the learner to whom our remarks apply; they refer to him only, who, gifted by nature with the higher power of poetry,-an art as difficult as it is enchanting, has made himself master, by application and study, of the mechanical process, and in whom, we believe, frequent exer And when thou wouldst solace gather, When our child's first accents flow, Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!" Though his care she must forego? When her little hands shall press thee, When her lip to thine is press'd, Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee, Think of him thy love had bless'd! Should her lineaments resemble Those thou never more mayst see, All my faults perchance thou knowest, Every feeling hath been shaken; Even my soul forsakes me now: tions upon new works awaken and stimulate that genius, which might be cramped and rendered tame, by long and minate attem to finish to the highest possible degree any one of the number. If we look at our poetical library we shall find, generally speaking the most distinguished poets have been the most voluminous, and that those who, like Gray, limited their productions to a few porns, anxiously and sedulously corrected and revised, have given them a stiff and artificial character, which, far from disarming criticis has rather embittered its violence, while the Aristarch, like Acti assailing Hector, meditates dealing the mortal wound through some unguarded crevice of the supposed impenetrable armour, with which the cautious bard has vainly invested himself. "Our opinion must be necessarily qualified by the cantion, that as no human invention can be infinitely fertile, as even the riches genius may be, in agricultural phrase, cropped out, and rendered sterile, and as each author must necessarily have a particular sie in which he is supposed to excel, and must therefore be more or les a mannerist; no one can with prudence persevere in forcing himself before the public when, from failure in invention, or from hav rendered the peculiarities of his style over trite and familiar, the veteran lags superfluous on the stage, a slighted mate in the dramas where he was once the principal personage. To this br liation vanity frequently exposes genius; and it is no doubt true that a copious power of diction, joined to habitual carelessness in cutposition, has frequently conduced to it. "We would therefore be understood to recommend to authors, while a consciousness of the possession of vigorous powers, carefully cultivated, unites with the favour of the public, to descend to arena, and continue their efforts vigorously while their hopes are high, their spirits active, and the public propitious, in order that the slightest failure of nerves or breath, they may be able to wit draw themselves honourably from the contest, gracefully giving way to other candidates for fame, and cultivating studies more suitab a flagging imagination than the fervid art of poetry. Thus, bowser, is the affair of the authors themselves: should they neglect this pr dential course, the public will, no doubt, have more indiferent books on their table than would otherwise have loaded it; and tå the world always seizes the first opportunity of recalling the ap plause it has bestowed, the former wreaths of the writers will fir time be blighted by their immediate failure. But these evils, as the public is concerned, are greatly overbalanced by such as from the timid caution which bids genius suppress its efforts i they shall be refined into unattainable perfection: and we can but repeat our conviction that poetry, being, in its higher classes, så art which has for its elements sublimity and unaffected beauty, more liable than any other to suffer from the labour of polishing, from the elaborate and composite style of ornament, and alternate affectation of simplicity and artifice, which characterise the works even of the first poets, when they have been over-antions to secure public applause, by long and reiterated correction. It must be remembered that we speak of the higher tones of composition; there are others of a subordinate character, where extreme art and lab are not bestowed in vain. But we cannot consider over-altaba correction as likely to be employed with advantage upon pa those of Lord Byron, which have for their object to roase the nation, and awaken the passions." • See Quarterly Review, vol. xvi. p. 178. Fare thee well!-thus disunited, Torn from every nearer tie, Sear'd in heart, and lone, and blighted, More than this I scarce can die. March 17, 1816.(1) A SKETCH. (2) "Honest-honest Iago! If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee."-Shakspeare. She taught the child to read, and taught so well, (1) Of this and the five following pieces, the first four were written immediately before Lord Byron's final departure from England; the others, during the earlier part of his residence in the neighbourhood of Geneva. They all refer to the unhappy event, which will for ever mark the chief crisis of his personal story,- that separation from Lady Byron, of which, after all that has been said and written, the real motives and circumstances remain as obscure as ever. It is only, of course, with Lord Byron's part in the transaction that the public have any sort of title to concern themselves. He has given us this right, by making a domestic occurrence the subject of printed yerses; but, so long as the other party chooses to guard that reserve, which few can be so uncharitable as not to ascribe, in the main, to a high feeling, it is entirely impossible to arrive at any clear and definite judg ment on the case as a whole. Each reader must, therefore, be content to interpret for himself, as fairly as he may, an already bulky collection of evidence, which will probably be doubled before it has any claim to be considered as complete. There are, however, two important points which seem to us to be placed beyond all chance of dispute hereafter: namely, first, that Lord Byron himself never knew the precise origin of his Lady's resolution to quit his society, in 1816; and, secondly, that, down to the last, he never despaired of being ultimately reconciled to her. Both of these facts appear to be established, in the clearest manner, by Mr. Moore's Life, and the whole subsequent tenour of the Poet's own diaries, letters, and conversations. Mr. Kennedy, in his account of Lord Byron's last residence in Cephalonia, represents him as saying,-"Lady Byron deserves every respect from me: I do not indeed know the cause of the separation, and I have remained, and ever will remain, ready for a reconciliation, whenever circumstances open and point out the way to it." Mr. Moore has preserved evidence of one attempt which Lord Byron made to bring about an explanation with his Lady, ere he left Switzerland for Italy. Whether he ever repeated the experiment we are uncertain: but that failed, -and the failure must be borne in mind, when the reader considers some of the smaller pieces which follows. Mr. Moore says, "It was about the middle of April that his two celebrated copies of verses, "Fare thee well," and "A Sketch," made their appearance in the newspapers; and while the latter poem was generally, and, it must be owned, justly condemned, as a sort of literary assault on an obscure female, whose situation ought to have placed ber as much beneath his satire, as the undignified mode of his attack certainly raised her above it, with regard to the other poem, And panted for the truth it could not hear, Nor Fortune change-Pride raise-nor Passion bow, But wanting one sweet weakness-to forgive. opinions were a good deal more divided. To many it appeared a strain of true conjugal tenderness,-a kind of appeal which no woman with a heart could resist; while, by others, on the contrary, it was considered to be a mere showy effusion of sentiment, as difficult for real feeling to have produced as it was easy for fancy and art, and altogether unworthy of the deep interests involved in the subject. To this latter opinion I confess my own to have been, at first, strongly inclined; and suspicious as I could not help thinking the sentiment that could, at such a moment, indulge in such verses, the taste that prompted or sanctioned their publication appeared to me even still more questionable. On reading, however, his own account of all the circumstances in the Memoranda, I found that on both points I had, in common with a large portion of the public, done him injustice. He there described, and in a manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender recollections under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were produced,the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote them." Neither did it appear, from that account, to have been from any wish or intention of his own, but through the injudicious zeal of a friend whom he had suffered to take a copy, that the verses met the public eye."—L. E. "Moore, in his Life, dwells at some length on the fact that the annals of men of genius present but too many instances of their unfitness for domestic ties, and too often afford occasion to draw a lamentable contrast between their professed sentiments and actual conduct. "Alfieri," says he, "though he could write a sonnet full of tenderness to his mother, never saw her but once after their early separation, though he frequently passed within a few miles of her residence. The poet Young, with all his parade of domestic sorrows, was, it appears, a neglectful husband, a harsh father; and Sterne, to use the words employed by Lord Byron, preferred whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.'" With the cases here quoted the world, in general, has classed that of Lord Byron, though "time, which makes man just to his fellows," has already begun to reverse a judgment, formed, as far as regards the poet's domestic conduct, in total, and indeed avowed, ignorance of facts.-P. E. (2) "I send you my last night's dream, and request to have fifty copies struck off, for private distribution. I wish Mr. Gifford to look at them. They are from life. Lord R. to Mr. M. March 30, 1816.-L. E. The appearance of the MS. confirms, and more than confirms, this. It is blotted all over with the marks of tears." If like a snake she steal within your walls, To make a Pandemonium where she dwells, Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought, [prayer, March 29, 1816. (1) In first draught-"weltering."—"I doubt about 'weltering.' We say 'weltering in blood;' but do not they also use 'weltering in the wind,' weltering on a gibbet?' I have no dictionary, so look. In the mean time, I have put festering;' which, perhaps, in any case is the best word of the two. Shakspeare has it often, and I do not think it too strong for the figure in this thing. Quick! quick! quick! quick!" Lord B. to Mr. M. April 2.-L. E. ENDORSEMENT TO THE DEED OF SEPA A YEAR ago you swore, fond she! STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.(3) In that deep midnight of the mind, When fortune changed-and love fled far, Which rose and set not to the last. That watch'd me as a seraph's eye, And when the cloud upon us came, And dash'd the darkness all away. Still may thy spirit dwell on mine, Than in the world's defied rebuke. Its boughs above a monument. The winds might rend-the skies might pour, But there thou wert-and still wouldst be Devoted in the stormiest hour To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me. But thou and thine shall know no blight, For Heaven in sunshine will requite The kind—and thee the most of all. Then let the ties of baffled love Be broken-thine will never break; And these, when all was lost beside, Earth is no desert-even to me. (2) "The lawyers objected to it as superfluous. It was written as we were getting up the signing and sealing.” Lord B. to Mr. Moore. Ravenna, 1820.-P. E. (3) His sister, the Honourable Mrs. Leigh.—These stanzRE, the parting tribute to her, whose unshaken tenderness had been the author's sole consolation during the crisis of demestic misery-were, we believe, the last verses written by Lord Byron in England. In a note to Mr. Rogers dated STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.(1) THOUGH the day of my destiny's over, The faults which so many could find; Then when nature around me is smiling, I do not believe it beguiling, Because it reminds me of thine; And when winds are at war with the ocean, If their billows excite an emotion, It is that they bear me from thee. To pain-it shall not be its slave. They may crush, but they shall not contemnThey may torture, but shall not subdue me "Tis of thee that I think-not of them.(3) Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though woman, thou didst not forsake, Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake,Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, Though parted, it was not to fly, Nor the war of the many with one- From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd, April 16th, he says,-"My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow: we shall not meet again for some time at all events, -if ever! and, under these circumstances, I trust to stand excused to you and Mr. Sheridan, for being unable to wait upon him this evening." On the 25th, the poet took a last leave of his native country.-L. E. (1) These beautiful verses, so expressive of the writer's wounded feelings at the moment, were written in July, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva, and transmitted to England for publication, with some other pieces. "Be careful," he says, "in printing the stanzas beginning, 'Though the day of my destiny's,' etc., which I think well of as a composition."-L. E. (2) In the MS. "Though the days of my glory are over, And the sun of my fame hath declined."-L. E. (3) In the MS. "There is many a pang to pursue me, And many a peril to stem: They may torture, but shall not subdue me; They may crush, but they shall not contemn."-L. E. (4) In the MS. "Though watchful, 't was but to reclaim me, Nor, silent, to sanction a lie."-L. E. EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA.(5) My sister! my sweet sister! if a name But other claims and other ties thou hast, If my inheritance of storms hath been I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks, I have been cunning in mine overthrow, Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward. Kingdoms and empires in my little day Review, for January 1831, "there is, perhaps, nothing more mournfully and desolately beautiful in the whole range of Lord Byron's poetry"-were also written at Diodati; and sent home at the time for publication, in case Mrs. Leigh should sanction it. "There is," he says, “amongst the manuscripts an Epistle to my Sister, on which I should wish her opinion to be consulted before publication; if she objects, of course omit it." On the 5th of October he writes, "My sister has decided on the omission of the lines. Upon this point, her option will be followed. As I have no copy of them, I request that you will preserve one for me in MS.; for I never can remember a line of that nor any other composition of mine. God help me! if I proceed in this scribbling, I shall have frittered away my mind before I am thirty; but poetry is at times a real relief to me. Tomorrow I am for Italy." The Epistle was first given to the world in 1830.-L. E. He returned safely from the wreck of the Wager (in Anson's voyage), and subsequently circumnavigated the world, many (5) These stanzas-" than which," says the Quarterly years after, as commander of a similar expedition. |