Byron May Clarissa Gillington
A Day with Lord Byron
The game concluded, Byron's carriage is announced: his friends and he proceed in it as far as the town gates of Pisa, by this means to avoid the starers of the streets. Horses are in readiness at the gates: the company, with one or two servant-men, mount and ride into the pine-forest that reaches towards the sea.
Byron is as excellent and graceful a rider as a swimmer, with remarkable powers of endurance. He can cover seventy or eighty miles a day, fast going, and swim five miles at a stretch: he is indeed, in many respects, the typical open-air Englishman. But to-day he rides slowly and immersed in thought. As his wife years since assured him, he is at heart the most melancholy of mankind, often when apparently the gayest. His abnormally long sight takes in every detail of the scenery, – storing it up unconsciously for future reference. It has been said that Byron is nothing without his descriptions: and in these he has achieved some of his finest work: notably in some immortal stanzas of Childe Harold, with their dazzling panoramic succession of vivid scenes: whether depicting how
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand.
or, on the eve of Waterloo,
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
whether again, in the "vale of vintage,"
The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
And hills all rich with blossom'd trees,
…
And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o'er this paradise.
or, looking backwards through a score of centuries,
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand – his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low —
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him – he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON AND THE BIRD
"Thro' the crevice where it came,
That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,
And seem'd to say them all for me!"
(The Prisoner of Chillon.)
Byron is emphatically a citizen of the world, who has "not only painted the environs, but reflected the passions and aspirations of every scene which he visualizes." And it is this magic power of conveying the authentic impression of an actual occurrence, which renders his most recondite situations so thrilling, – which breathes a Western vigour into the scented air of the Orient, and thrills with poignant pathos through the horrors of the Prisoner of Chillon.
A light broke in upon my brain —
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,
The sweetest song ear ever heard:
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track;
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done;
But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,
And seem'd to say them all for me!
I never saw its like before,
I ne'er shall see its likeness more:
It seem'd like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,
Or broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity,
Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!
Or if it were, in winged guise,
A visitant from Paradise;
For – Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile —
I sometimes deem'd that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,
And then 'twas mortal well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice so doubly lone,
Lone as the corse within its shroud,
Lone as a solitary cloud, —
A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear
When skies are blue, and earth is gay.
(The Prisoner of Chillon.)
Unhappily, all these shifting scenes of imagination or experience – so the poet has made mournful confession – have little power to wean him from himself. "Neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, above, around, and beneath me."