PROMETHEUS. I. TITAN! to whose immortal eyes Were not as things that gods despise ; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, II. Titan! to thee the strife was given held themselves above the opinion of the world, and both were followed by the fame and popularity which they seemed to despise. The writings of both exhibit an inborn, though sometimes ill-regulated, generosity of mind, and a spirit of proud independence, frequently pushed to extremes. Both carried their hatred of hypocrisy beyond the verge of prudence, and indulged their vein of satire to the borders of licentiousness. Both died in the flower of their age in a foreign land, SIR WALTER SCOTT.] Which for its pleasure doth create Refused thee even the boon to die: The wretched gift eternity Was thine-and thou hast borne it well. That in his hand the lightnings trembled. III. Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, The sum of human wretchedness, Still in thy patient energy, In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit : Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His wretchedness, and his resistance, And a firm will, and a deep sense, Its own concenter'd recompense, Diodati, July, 1816. A FRAGMENT. ["COULD I REMOUNT," &c.] COULD I remount the river of my years Into the number of the nameless tides. * * What is this Death? a quiet of the heart? The whole of that of which we are a part? For life is but a vision-what I see Of all which lives alone is life to me, And being so - the absent are the dead, Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread A dreary shroud around us, and invest The absent are the dead-for they are cold, Since thus divided-equal must it be may are they The under-earth inhabitants Or have they their own language? and a sense As midnight in her solitude?-Oh Earth! [birth? But bubbles on thy surface; and the key * * * * Diodati, July, 1816. SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN. ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and De Staël- But they have made them lovelier, for the lore Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real! Diodati, July, 1816. (1) Geneva, Ferney, Copet, Lausanne. -[See antè, Vol. VIII. p. 163. —" I have," says Lord Byron, " traversed all Rousseau's ground with the Héloïse before me, and am struck to a degree that I cannot express, with the force and accuracy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. I enclose you a sprig of Gibbon's acacia and some rose-leaves from his garden, which, with part of his house, I have just seen. You will find honourable mention, in his Life, made of this acacia, when he walked out on the night of concluding his history. Madame de Staël has made Copet as agreeable as society can make any place on earth." -B. Letters, 1816.] |