Lord Byron

“ The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven, Even with its own desiring phantasy, And to a thought such shape and image given, As haunts the unquenched soul—parched—wearied—wrung—and riven.
CXXII.
Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, And fevers into false creation;—where, Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? In him alone. Can Nature show so fair? Where are the charms and virtues which we dare Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, The unreached Paradise of our despair, Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, And overpowers the page where it would bloom again. ”

“ See What crimes it costs to be a moment free And famous through all ages! But beneath His fate the moral lurks of destiny; His day of double victory and death Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.
LXXXVI.
The third of the same moon whose former course Had all but crowned him, on the self-same day Deposed him gently from his throne of force, And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway, And all we deem delightful, and consume Our souls to compass through each arduous way, Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb? ”

“ But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne, THEIR admiration thy best weapon shone; The part of Philip's son was thine, not then (Unless aside thy purple had been thrown) Like stern Diogenes to mock at men; For sceptred cynics earth were far too wide a den.
XLII.
But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell, And THERE hath been thy bane; there is a fire And motion of the soul, which will not dwell In its own narrow being, but aspire Beyond the fitting medium of desire; And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire Of aught but rest ”

“ For I have cherished them as dear, Because they yet may meet thine eye, And guide thy soul to mine e'en here, When thou behold'st them drooping nigh, And know'st them gathered by the Rhine, And offered from my heart to thine! The river nobly foams and flows, The charm of this enchanted ground, And all its thousand turns disclose Some fresher beauty varying round; The haughtiest breast its wish might bound Through life to dwell delighted here; Nor could on earth a spot be found To Nature and to me so dear, Could thy dear eyes in following mine Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine! ”

“ Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote, To his snowy camese and his shaggy capote? To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock, And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock. Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live? Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego? What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe? Macedonia sends forth her invincible race; For a time they abandon the cave and the chase: But those scarves of blood-red shall be redder, before The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o'er. ”

“ Where Peleus' son? whom Hell in vain enthralled, His shade from Hades upon that dread day Bursting to light in terrible array! What! could not Pluto spare the chief once more, To scare a second robber from his prey? Idly he wandered on the Stygian shore, Nor now preserved the walls he loved to shield before.
XV.
Cold is the heart, fair Greece, that looks on thee, Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they loved; Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed By British hands, which it had best behoved To guard those relics ne'er to be restored. ”

“ And surely she who now so fondly rears Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening, Beholds the rainbow of her future years, Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears. Young Peri of the West!—'tis well for me My years already doubly number thine; My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee, And safely view thy ripening beauties shine: Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline; Happier, that while all younger hearts shall bleed Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign To those whose admiration shall succeed, But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed. ”

“ Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt The sunshine for a while, and downward go Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt: Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo! The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.
XIII.
Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; But is not Doria's menace come to pass? Are they not BRIDLED?—Venice, lost and won, Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose! ”

“ There is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement, For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.
CXXX.
O Time! the beautifier of the dead, Adorner of the ruin, comforter And only healer when the heart hath bled— Time! the corrector where our judgments err, The test of truth, love,—sole philosopher, For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift, Which never loses though it doth defer— Time, the avenger! ”

“ Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon: Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold, Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone: Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.
LXXXIX.
The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; Unchanged in all except its foreign lord— Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame ”

“ As o'er thy plain the Pilgrim pricked his steed, Who could foresee thee, in a space so brief, A scene where mingling foes should boast and bleed. Peace to the perished! may the warrior's meed And tears of triumph their reward prolong! Till others fall where other chieftains lead, Thy name shall circle round the gaping throng, And shine in worthless lays, the theme of transient song.
XLIV.
Enough of Battle's minions! let them play Their game of lives, and barter breath for fame: Fame that will scarce reanimate their clay, Though thousands fall to deck some single name. ”

“ When riseth Lacedaemon's hardihood, When Thebes Epaminondas rears again, When Athens' children are with hearts endued, When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men, Then mayst thou be restored; but not till then. A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; An hour may lay it in the dust: and when Can man its shattered splendour renovate, Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?
LXXXV.
And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou! Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now ”

“ Come, and compare Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek, With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air, Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer!
XCII.
The sky is changed!—and such a change! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue; And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! ”

“ Here impious men have punished been; and lo, Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell, In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.
XXI.
And here and there, as up the crags you spring, Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path; Yet deem not these devotion's offering— These are memorials frail of murderous wrath; For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath Poured forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife, Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath; And grove and glen with thousand such are rife Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life! ”

“ O Rome! my country! city of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day— A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
LXXIX.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago ”

“ Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast, Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore: Boast of the aged! lesson of the young! Which sages venerate and bards adore, As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.
XCII.
The parted bosom clings to wonted home, If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth; He that is lonely, hither let him roam, And gaze complacent on congenial earth. Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth ”

“ States fall, arts fade—but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
IV.
But unto us she hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the dogeless city's vanished sway; Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away— The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
V.
The beings of the mind are not of clay ”

“ I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream Wherein that image shall for ever dwell; The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.
LIV.
In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie Ashes which make it holier, dust which is E'en in itself an immortality, Though there were nothing save the past, and this The particle of those sublimities Which have relapsed to chaos:—here repose Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, The starry Galileo, with his woes; Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose. ”

“ What careth she for hearts when once possessed? Do proper homage to thine idol's eyes, But not too humbly, or she will despise Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes; Disguise e'en tenderness, if thou art wise; Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes; Pique her and soothe in turn, soon Passion crowns thy hopes.
XXXV.
'Tis an old lesson: Time approves it true, And those who know it best deplore it most; When all is won that all desire to woo, The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost: Youth wasted, minds degraded, honour lost, These are thy fruits, successful Passion! ”

“ It is that settled, ceaseless gloom The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore, That will not look beyond the tomb, But cannot hope for rest before. What exile from himself can flee? To zones, though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be, The blight of life—the demon Thought. Yet others rapt in pleasure seem, And taste of all that I forsake: Oh! may they still of transport dream, And ne'er, at least like me, awake! Through many a clime 'tis mine to go, With many a retrospection curst ”

“ This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece, If Greece one true-born patriot can boast: Not such as prate of war but skulk in peace, The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost, Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost, And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword: Ah, Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most— Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record Of hero sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde! ”

“ He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore, And make his heart a spirit: he who knows That tender mystery, will love the more, For this is Love's recess, where vain men's woes, And the world's waste, have driven him far from those, For 'tis his nature to advance or die; He stands not still, but or decays, or grows Into a boundless blessing, which may vie With the immortal lights, in its eternity! ”

“ Clarens! sweet Clarens! birthplace of deep Love! Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought; Thy trees take root in love; the snows above The very glaciers have his colours caught, And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought By rays which sleep there lovingly: the rocks, The permanent crags, tell here of Love, who sought In them a refuge from the worldly shocks, Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks.
C.
Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod,— Undying Love's, who here ascends a throne To which the steps are mountains ”

“ For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page.
LXXVI.
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No! True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, But not for you will Freedom's altars flame. Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe: Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same; Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame. ”

“ For on this morn three potent nations meet, To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.
XL.
By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see (For one who hath no friend, no brother there) Their rival scarfs of mixed embroidery, Their various arms that glitter in the air! What gallant war-hounds rouse them from their lair, And gnash their fangs, loud yelling for the prey! All join the chase, but few the triumph share: The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away, And Havoc scarce for joy can cumber their array. ”