During his trance,
his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of
his admiration .
his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of
his admiration .
Byron
Gently!
[_Exeunt, bearing_ OLIMPIA. _The scene closes_.
PART III.
SCENE I. --_A Castle in the Apennines, surrounded by a wild but
smiling Country. Chorus of Peasants singing before the Gates_.
_Chorus_.
I.
The wars are over,
The spring is come;
The bride and her lover
Have sought their home:
They are happy, we rejoice;
Let their hearts have an echo in every voice!
II.
The spring is come; the violet's gone,
The first-born child of the early sun:[dt]
With us she is but a winter's flower,
The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower, 10
And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue
To the youngest sky of the self-same hue.
III.
And when the spring comes with her host
Of flowers, that flower beloved the most
Shrinks from the crowd that may confuse
Her heavenly odour and virgin hues.
IV.
Pluck the others, but still remember
Their herald out of dim December--
The morning star of all the flowers,
The pledge of daylight's lengthened hours; 20
Nor, midst the roses, e'er forget
The virgin--virgin Violet.
_Enter_ CAESAR.
_Caes. _ (_singing_).
The wars are all over,
Our swords are all idle,
The steed bites the bridle,
The casque's on the wall.
There's rest for the rover;
But his armour is rusty,
And the veteran grows crusty,
As he yawns in the hall. 30
He drinks--but what's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!
No bugle awakes him with life-and-death call.
_Chorus_.
But the hound bayeth loudly,
The boar's in the wood,
And the falcon longs proudly
To spring from her hood:
On the wrist of the noble
She sits like a crest,
And the air is in trouble 40
With birds from their nest.
_Caes_.
Oh! shadow of Glory!
Dim image of War!
But the chase hath no story,
Her hero no star,
Since Nimrod, the founder
Of empire and chase,
Who made the woods wonder
And quake for their race.
When the lion was young, 50
In the pride of his might,
Then 'twas sport for the strong
To embrace him in fight;
To go forth, with a pine
For a spear, 'gainst the mammoth,
Or strike through the ravine[du]
At the foaming behemoth;
While man was in stature
As towers in our time,
The first born of Nature, 60
And, like her, sublime!
_Chorus_.
But the wars are over,
The spring is come;
The bride and her lover
Have sought their home:
They are happy, and we rejoice;
Let their hearts have an echo from every voice!
[_Exeunt the Peasantry, singing_.
FRAGMENT OF THE THIRD PART OF _THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED_.
_Chorus_.
When the merry bells are ringing,
And the peasant girls are singing,
And the early flowers are flinging
Their odours in the air;
And the honey bee is clinging
To the buds; and birds are winging
Their way, pair by pair:
Then the earth looks free from trouble
With the brightness of a bubble:
Though I did not make it, 10
I could breathe on and break it;
But too much I scorn it,
Or else I would mourn it,
To see despots and slaves
Playing o'er their own graves.
_Enter_ COUNT ARNOLD.
{_Mem. _ Jealous--Arnold of Caesar.
{Olympia at first not liking Caesar
{--then? --Arnold jealous of himself
{under his former figure, owing to
{the power of intellect, etc. , etc. , etc.
_Arnold_. You are merry, Sir--what? singing too?
_Caesar_. It is
The land of Song--and Canticles you know
Were once my avocation.
_Arn. _ Nothing moves you;
You scoff even at your own calamity--
And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20
Son of the Morning! and yet Lucifer
Can smile.
_Caes. _ His shape can--would you have me weep,
In the fair form I wear, to please you?
_Arn. _ Ah!
_Caes. _ You are grave--what have you on your spirit!
_Arn. _ Nothing.
_Caes. _ How mortals lie by instinct! If you ask
A disappointed courtier--What's the matter?
"Nothing"--an outshone Beauty what has made
Her smooth brow crisp--"Oh, Nothing! "--a young heir
When his Sire has recovered from the Gout,
What ails him? "Nothing! " or a Monarch who 30
Has heard the truth, and looks imperial on it--
What clouds his royal aspect? "Nothing," "Nothing! "
Nothing--eternal nothing--of these nothings
All are a lie--for all to them are much!
And they themselves alone the real "Nothings. "
Your present Nothing, too, is something to you--
What is it?
_Arn. _ Know you not?
_Caes. _ I only know
What I desire to know! and will not waste
Omniscience upon phantoms. Out with it!
If you seek aid from me--or else be silent. 40
And eat your thoughts--till they breed snakes within you.
_Arn. _ Olimpia!
_Caes. _ I thought as much--go on.
_Arn. _ I thought she had loved me.
_Caes. _ Blessings on your Creed!
What a good Christian you were found to be!
But what cold Sceptic hath appalled your faith
And transubstantiated to crumbs again
The _body_ of your Credence?
_Arn. _ No one--but--
Each day--each hour--each minute shows me more
And more she loves me not--
_Caes. _ Doth she rebel?
_Arn. _ No, she is calm, and meek, and silent with me, 50
And coldly dutiful, and proudly patient--
Endures my Love--not meets it.
_Caes. _ That seems strange.
You are beautiful and brave! the first is much
For passion--and the rest for Vanity.
_Arn. _ I saved her life, too; and her Father's life,
And Father's house from ashes.
_Caes. _ These are nothing.
You seek for Gratitude--the Philosopher's stone.
_Arn. _ And find it not.
_Caes. _ You cannot find what is not.
But _found_ would it content you? would you owe
To thankfulness what you desire from Passion? 60
No! No! you would be _loved_--what you call loved--
_Self-loved_--loved for _yourself_--for neither health,
Nor wealth, nor youth, nor power, nor rank, nor beauty--
For these you may be stript of--but _beloved_
As an abstraction--for--you know not what!
These are the wishes of a moderate lover--
And _so_ you love.
_Arn. _ Ah! could I be beloved,
Would I ask wherefore?
_Caes. _ Yes! and not believe
The answer--You are jealous.
_Arn. _ And of whom?
_Caes. _ It may be of yourself,[252] for Jealousy 70
Is as a shadow of the Sun. The Orb
Is mighty--as you mortals deem--and to
Your little Universe seems universal;
But, great as He appears, and is to you,
The smallest cloud--the slightest vapour of
Your humid earth enables you to look
Upon a Sky which you revile as dull;
Though your eyes dare not gaze on it when cloudless.
Nothing can blind a mortal like to light.
Now Love in you is as the Sun--a thing 80
Beyond you--and your Jealousy's of Earth--
A cloud of your own raising.
_Arn. _ Not so always!
There is a cause at times.
_Caes. _ Oh, yes! when atoms jostle,
The System is in peril. But I speak
Of things you know not. Well, to earth again!
This precious thing of dust--this bright Olimpia--
This marvellous Virgin, is a marble maid--
An Idol, but a cold one to your heat
Promethean, and unkindled by your torch.
_Arn. _ Slave!
_Caes. _ In the victor's Chariot, when Rome triumphed, 90
There was a Slave of yore to tell him truth!
You are a Conqueror--command your Slave.
_Arn. _ Teach me the way to win the woman's love.
_Caes. _ Leave her.
_Arn. _ Where that the path--I'd not pursue it.
_Caes. _ No doubt! for if you did, the remedy
Would be for a disease already cured.
_Arn. _ All wretched as I am, I would not quit
My unrequited love, for all that's happy.
_Caes. _ You have possessed the woman--still possess.
What need you more?
_Arn. _ To be myself possessed-- 100
To be her heart as she is mine.
FOOTNOTES:
[201] {473}[_The Three Brothers_, by Joshua Pickersgill, junior, was
published in 1803. There is no copy of _The Three Brothers_ in the
British Museum. The following extracts are taken from a copy in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford (vol. 4, cap. xi. pp. 229-350):--
"Arnaud, the natural son of the Marquis de Souvricour, was a child
'extraordinary in Beauty and Intellect. ' When travelling with his
parents to Languedoc, Arnaud being 8 years old, he was shot at by
banditti, and forsaken by his parents. The Captain of the band nursed
him. 'But those perfections to which Arnaud owed his existence, ceased
to adorn it. The ball had gored his shoulder, and the fall had
dislocated it; by the latter misadventure his spine likewise was so
fatally injured as to be irrecoverable to its pristine uprightness.
Injuries so compound confounded the Captain, who sorrowed to see a
creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an
excrescent shoulder. ' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents.
'The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their
indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct. . . . Of his
person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy. . . . "Were a
blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Arnaud] be it my
immediate dissolution. " "I think," said his mother, . . . "that you could
wish better. " "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I
ever had remained unborn. "' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and
views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to
throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He
goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew
himself to be interrogated. What he required. . . . What was that answer
the effects explain. . . . There passed in liveliest portraiture the
various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much
desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt
that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained
unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among
which glided by Alexander, Alcibiades, and Hephestion: at length
appeared the supernatural effigy of a man, whose perfections human
artist never could depict or insculp--Demetrius, the son of Antigonus.
Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within
his hand the resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his
breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point
through his heart, and underwent a painless death.
During his trance,
his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of
his admiration . . . Arnaud awoke a Julian! '"]
[202] {474}[For a _resume_ of M. G. Lewis's _Wood Demon_ (afterwards
re-cast as _One O'clock; or, The Knight and the Wood-Demon_, 1811), see
"First Visit to the Theatre in London," _Poems_, by Hartley Coleridge,
1851, i. , Appendix C, pp. cxcix. -cciii. The _Wood Demon_ in its original
form was never published. ]
[203] [Mrs. Shelley inscribed the following note on the fly-leaf of her
copy of _The Deformed Transformed_:--
"This had long been a favourite subject with Lord Byron. I think that he
mentioned it also in Switzerland. I copied it--he sending a portion of
it at a time, as it was finished, to me. At this time he had a great
horror of its being said that he plagiarised, or that he studied for
ideas, and wrote with difficulty. Thus he gave Shelley Aikins' edition
of the British poets, that it might not be found in his house by some
English lounger, and reported home; thus, too, he always dated when he
began and when he ended a poem, to prove hereafter how quickly it was
done. I do not think that he altered a line in this drama after he had
once written it down. He composed and corrected in his mind. I do not
know how he meant to finish it; but he said himself that the whole
conduct of the story was already conceived. It was at this time that a
brutal paragraph[*] alluding to his lameness appeared, which he repeated
to me lest I should hear it from some one else. No action of Lord
Byron's life--scarce a line he has written--but was influenced by his
personal defect. "
[*] It is possible that Mrs. Shelley alludes to a sentence in the
_Memoirs, etc. , of Lord Byron_. (by Dr. John Watkin), 1822, p. 46: "A
malformation of one of his feet, and other indications of a rickety
constitution, served as a plea for suffering him to range the hills and
to wander about at his pleasure on the seashore, that his frame might be
invigorated by air and exercise. "]
[cv] {477} _The Deformed--a drama. --B. Pisa, 1822_.
[204] [Moore (_Life_, p. 13) quotes these lines in connection with a
passage in Byron's "Memoranda," where, in speaking of his own
sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the
feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother,
in one of her fits of passion, called him "_a lame brat! _". . . "It may
be questioned," he adds, "whether that whole drama [_The Deformed
Transformed_] was not indebted for its origin to that single
recollection. "
Byron's early letters (_e. g. _ November 2, 11, 17, 1804, _Letters_, 1898,
i. 41, 45, 48) are full of complaints of his mother's "eccentric
behaviour," her "fits of phrenzy," her "caprices," "passions," and so
forth; and there is convincing proof--see _Life_, pp. 28, 306;
_Letters_, 1898, ii. 122 (incident at Bellingham's execution);
_Letters_, 1901, vi. 179 (_Le Diable Boiteux_)--that he regarded the
contraction of the muscles of his legs as a more or less repulsive
deformity. And yet, to quote one of a hundred testimonies,--"with regard
to Lord Byron's features, Mr. Mathews observed, that he was the only man
he ever contemplated, to whom he felt disposed to apply the word
_beautiful_" (_Memoirs of Charles Matthews_, 1838, ii. 380). The
looker-on or the consoler computes the magnitude and the liberality of
the compensation. The sufferer thinks only of his sufferings. ]
[205] {478}[So, too, Prospero to Caliban, _Tempest_, act i. sc. 2, line
309, etc. ]
[206] {479}[Compare--"Have not partook oppression. " _Marino Faliero_,
act i. sc. 2, line 468, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 362, note 1. ]
[207] {480}[Compare the story of the philosopher Jamblichus and the
raising of Eros and Anteros from their "fountain-dwellings. "--_Manfred_,
act ii. sc. 2, line 93, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 105, note 2. ]
[cw] {481} _Give me the strength of the buffalo's foot_ (_which marks
me_). --[MS. ]
[cx] _The sailless dromedary_----. --[MS. ]
[cy] {482} _Now I can gibe the mightiest_. --[MS. ]
[208] {483}[So, too, in _The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus_ (Marlowe's
_Works_, 1858, p. 112), Faustus stabs his arm, "and with his proper
blood Assures his soul to be great Lucifer's. "]
[cz]
_Walk lively and pliant_.
_You shall rise up as pliant_. --[MS, erased. ]
[209] This is a well-known German superstition--a gigantic shadow
produced by reflection on the Brocken. [See Brewster's _Letters on
Natural Magic_, 1831, p. 128. ]
[da] _And such my command_. --[MS. ]
[210] {484}["Nigris vegetisque oculis. "--Suetonius, _Vitae C. Julius
Caesar_, cap. xiv. , _Opera Omnia_, 1826, i. 105. ]
[211] [_Vide post_, p. 501, note 1. ]
[212] ["Sed ante alias [Julius Caesar] dilexit M. Bruti matrem Serviliam
. . . dilexit et reginas . . . sed maxime Cleopatram" (_ibid. _, i. 113,
115). Cleopatra, born B. C. 69, was twenty-one years old when she met
Caesar, B. C. 48. ]
[db]
_And can_
_It be? the man who shook the earth is gone_. --[MS. ]
[213] {485}["Upon the whole, it may be doubted whether there be a name
of Antiquity which comes down with such a general charm as that of
_Alcibiades_. _Why? _ I cannot answer: who can? "--_Detached Thoughts_
(1821), No. 108, _Letters_, 1901, v. 461. For Sir Walter Scott's note on
this passage, see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 77, 78, note 2. ]
[214] [The outside of Socrates was that of a satyr and buffoon, but his
soul was all virtue, and from within him came such divine and pathetic
things, as pierced the heart, and drew tears from the hearers. --Plato,
_Symp_. , p. 216, D. ]
[215] {486}["Anthony had a noble dignity of countenance, a graceful
length of beard, a large forehead, an aquiline nose: and, upon the
whole, the same manly aspect that we see in the pictures and statues of
Hercules. "--Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation, 1838, p. 634. ]
[216] [As in the "Farnese" Hercules. ]
[217] [The beauty and mien [of Demetrius Poliorcetes] were so inimitable
that no statuary or painter could hit off a likeness. His countenance
had a mixture of grace and dignity; and was at once amiable and awful;
and the unsubdued and eager air of youth was blended with the majesty of
the hero and the king. --Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation,
1838, p. 616.
Demetrius the Besieger rescued Greece from the sway of Ptolemy and
Cassander, B. C. 307. He passed the following winter at Athens, where
divine honours were paid to him under the title of "the Preserver" (?
? ? ? ? ? [o(Sote/r]). He was "the shame of Greece in peace," by reason of
his profligacy--"the citadel was so polluted with his debaucheries, that
it appeared to be kept sacred in some degree when he indulged himself
only with such _Hetaerae_ as Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra. " He was
the unspiritual ancestor of Charles the Second. Once when his father,
Antigonus, had been told that he was indisposed, "he went to see him;
and when he came to the door, he met one of his favourites going out. He
went in, however, and, sitting down by him, took hold of his hand. 'My
fever,' said Demetrius, 'has left me. ' 'I knew it,' said Antigonus, 'for
I met it this moment at the door. '"--Plutarch's _Lives_, _ibid. _, pp.
621-623. ]
[218] {488}[Spercheus was a river-god, the husband of Polydora, the
daughter of Peleus. Peleus casts into the river the hair of his son
Achilles, in the pious hope that his son-in-law would accept the votive
offering, and grant the youth a safe return from the Trojan war. See
_Iliad_, xxiii. 140, _sqq. _]
[219] {489}["Whosoever," says Bacon, "hath anything fixed in his person
that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to
rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons
are extreme bold; first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to
scorn, but in process of time by a general habit; also it stirreth in
them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the
weakness of others, that they may have somewhat to repay. " (Essay
xliv. ). Byron's "chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction was that
mark of deformity on his person, by an acute sense of which he was first
stung into the ambition of being great. "--_Life_, p. 306. ]
[220] [Timur Bey, or Timur Lang, _i. e. _ "the lame Timur" (A. D.
1336-1405), was the founder of the Mogul dynasty. He was the Tamerlane
of history and of legend. Byron had certainly read the selections from
Marlowe's _Tamburlaine the Great_, in Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets_. ]
[221] {491}["I am black, but comely. "--_Song of Solomon_ i. 5. ]
[222] Adam means "_red earth_," from which the first man was formed.
[The word _ad? m_ is said to be analogous to the Assyrian _admu_,
"child"--_i. e. _ "one made" by God. --_Encycl. Bibl. _, art. "Adam. "]
[dc] {492} _This shape into Life_. --[_MS_. ]
[223] {493}[The reference is to the _homunculi_ of the alchymists. See
Retzsch's illustrations to Goethe's _Faust_, 1834, plates 3, 4, 5.
Compare, too, _The Second Part of Faust_, act ii. --
"The glass rings low, the charming power that lives
Within it makes the music that it gives.
It dims! it brightens! it will shape itself.
And see! a graceful dazzling little elf.
He lives! he moves! spruce mannikin of fire,
What more can we? what more can earth desire? "
Anster's Translation, 1886, p. 91. ]
[dd] _Your Interloper_----. --[MS. ]
[224] {494}[Compare _Prisoner of Chillon_, stanza ii. line 35, _Poetical
Works_, 1091, iv. 15, note i. Compare, too, the dialogue between
Mephistopheles and the Will-o'-the Wisp, in the scene on the Hartz
Mountains, in _Faust_, Part I. (see Anster's Translation, 1886, p.
271). ]
[225] {495}[The immediate reference is to the composite forces, German,
French, and Spanish, of the Imperial Army under the command of Charles
de Bourbon: but there is in lines 498-507 a manifest allusion to the
revolutionary movements in South America, Italy, and Spain, which were
at their height in 1822. (See the _Age of Bronze_, section vi. lines
260, _sq.
[_Exeunt, bearing_ OLIMPIA. _The scene closes_.
PART III.
SCENE I. --_A Castle in the Apennines, surrounded by a wild but
smiling Country. Chorus of Peasants singing before the Gates_.
_Chorus_.
I.
The wars are over,
The spring is come;
The bride and her lover
Have sought their home:
They are happy, we rejoice;
Let their hearts have an echo in every voice!
II.
The spring is come; the violet's gone,
The first-born child of the early sun:[dt]
With us she is but a winter's flower,
The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower, 10
And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue
To the youngest sky of the self-same hue.
III.
And when the spring comes with her host
Of flowers, that flower beloved the most
Shrinks from the crowd that may confuse
Her heavenly odour and virgin hues.
IV.
Pluck the others, but still remember
Their herald out of dim December--
The morning star of all the flowers,
The pledge of daylight's lengthened hours; 20
Nor, midst the roses, e'er forget
The virgin--virgin Violet.
_Enter_ CAESAR.
_Caes. _ (_singing_).
The wars are all over,
Our swords are all idle,
The steed bites the bridle,
The casque's on the wall.
There's rest for the rover;
But his armour is rusty,
And the veteran grows crusty,
As he yawns in the hall. 30
He drinks--but what's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!
No bugle awakes him with life-and-death call.
_Chorus_.
But the hound bayeth loudly,
The boar's in the wood,
And the falcon longs proudly
To spring from her hood:
On the wrist of the noble
She sits like a crest,
And the air is in trouble 40
With birds from their nest.
_Caes_.
Oh! shadow of Glory!
Dim image of War!
But the chase hath no story,
Her hero no star,
Since Nimrod, the founder
Of empire and chase,
Who made the woods wonder
And quake for their race.
When the lion was young, 50
In the pride of his might,
Then 'twas sport for the strong
To embrace him in fight;
To go forth, with a pine
For a spear, 'gainst the mammoth,
Or strike through the ravine[du]
At the foaming behemoth;
While man was in stature
As towers in our time,
The first born of Nature, 60
And, like her, sublime!
_Chorus_.
But the wars are over,
The spring is come;
The bride and her lover
Have sought their home:
They are happy, and we rejoice;
Let their hearts have an echo from every voice!
[_Exeunt the Peasantry, singing_.
FRAGMENT OF THE THIRD PART OF _THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED_.
_Chorus_.
When the merry bells are ringing,
And the peasant girls are singing,
And the early flowers are flinging
Their odours in the air;
And the honey bee is clinging
To the buds; and birds are winging
Their way, pair by pair:
Then the earth looks free from trouble
With the brightness of a bubble:
Though I did not make it, 10
I could breathe on and break it;
But too much I scorn it,
Or else I would mourn it,
To see despots and slaves
Playing o'er their own graves.
_Enter_ COUNT ARNOLD.
{_Mem. _ Jealous--Arnold of Caesar.
{Olympia at first not liking Caesar
{--then? --Arnold jealous of himself
{under his former figure, owing to
{the power of intellect, etc. , etc. , etc.
_Arnold_. You are merry, Sir--what? singing too?
_Caesar_. It is
The land of Song--and Canticles you know
Were once my avocation.
_Arn. _ Nothing moves you;
You scoff even at your own calamity--
And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20
Son of the Morning! and yet Lucifer
Can smile.
_Caes. _ His shape can--would you have me weep,
In the fair form I wear, to please you?
_Arn. _ Ah!
_Caes. _ You are grave--what have you on your spirit!
_Arn. _ Nothing.
_Caes. _ How mortals lie by instinct! If you ask
A disappointed courtier--What's the matter?
"Nothing"--an outshone Beauty what has made
Her smooth brow crisp--"Oh, Nothing! "--a young heir
When his Sire has recovered from the Gout,
What ails him? "Nothing! " or a Monarch who 30
Has heard the truth, and looks imperial on it--
What clouds his royal aspect? "Nothing," "Nothing! "
Nothing--eternal nothing--of these nothings
All are a lie--for all to them are much!
And they themselves alone the real "Nothings. "
Your present Nothing, too, is something to you--
What is it?
_Arn. _ Know you not?
_Caes. _ I only know
What I desire to know! and will not waste
Omniscience upon phantoms. Out with it!
If you seek aid from me--or else be silent. 40
And eat your thoughts--till they breed snakes within you.
_Arn. _ Olimpia!
_Caes. _ I thought as much--go on.
_Arn. _ I thought she had loved me.
_Caes. _ Blessings on your Creed!
What a good Christian you were found to be!
But what cold Sceptic hath appalled your faith
And transubstantiated to crumbs again
The _body_ of your Credence?
_Arn. _ No one--but--
Each day--each hour--each minute shows me more
And more she loves me not--
_Caes. _ Doth she rebel?
_Arn. _ No, she is calm, and meek, and silent with me, 50
And coldly dutiful, and proudly patient--
Endures my Love--not meets it.
_Caes. _ That seems strange.
You are beautiful and brave! the first is much
For passion--and the rest for Vanity.
_Arn. _ I saved her life, too; and her Father's life,
And Father's house from ashes.
_Caes. _ These are nothing.
You seek for Gratitude--the Philosopher's stone.
_Arn. _ And find it not.
_Caes. _ You cannot find what is not.
But _found_ would it content you? would you owe
To thankfulness what you desire from Passion? 60
No! No! you would be _loved_--what you call loved--
_Self-loved_--loved for _yourself_--for neither health,
Nor wealth, nor youth, nor power, nor rank, nor beauty--
For these you may be stript of--but _beloved_
As an abstraction--for--you know not what!
These are the wishes of a moderate lover--
And _so_ you love.
_Arn. _ Ah! could I be beloved,
Would I ask wherefore?
_Caes. _ Yes! and not believe
The answer--You are jealous.
_Arn. _ And of whom?
_Caes. _ It may be of yourself,[252] for Jealousy 70
Is as a shadow of the Sun. The Orb
Is mighty--as you mortals deem--and to
Your little Universe seems universal;
But, great as He appears, and is to you,
The smallest cloud--the slightest vapour of
Your humid earth enables you to look
Upon a Sky which you revile as dull;
Though your eyes dare not gaze on it when cloudless.
Nothing can blind a mortal like to light.
Now Love in you is as the Sun--a thing 80
Beyond you--and your Jealousy's of Earth--
A cloud of your own raising.
_Arn. _ Not so always!
There is a cause at times.
_Caes. _ Oh, yes! when atoms jostle,
The System is in peril. But I speak
Of things you know not. Well, to earth again!
This precious thing of dust--this bright Olimpia--
This marvellous Virgin, is a marble maid--
An Idol, but a cold one to your heat
Promethean, and unkindled by your torch.
_Arn. _ Slave!
_Caes. _ In the victor's Chariot, when Rome triumphed, 90
There was a Slave of yore to tell him truth!
You are a Conqueror--command your Slave.
_Arn. _ Teach me the way to win the woman's love.
_Caes. _ Leave her.
_Arn. _ Where that the path--I'd not pursue it.
_Caes. _ No doubt! for if you did, the remedy
Would be for a disease already cured.
_Arn. _ All wretched as I am, I would not quit
My unrequited love, for all that's happy.
_Caes. _ You have possessed the woman--still possess.
What need you more?
_Arn. _ To be myself possessed-- 100
To be her heart as she is mine.
FOOTNOTES:
[201] {473}[_The Three Brothers_, by Joshua Pickersgill, junior, was
published in 1803. There is no copy of _The Three Brothers_ in the
British Museum. The following extracts are taken from a copy in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford (vol. 4, cap. xi. pp. 229-350):--
"Arnaud, the natural son of the Marquis de Souvricour, was a child
'extraordinary in Beauty and Intellect. ' When travelling with his
parents to Languedoc, Arnaud being 8 years old, he was shot at by
banditti, and forsaken by his parents. The Captain of the band nursed
him. 'But those perfections to which Arnaud owed his existence, ceased
to adorn it. The ball had gored his shoulder, and the fall had
dislocated it; by the latter misadventure his spine likewise was so
fatally injured as to be irrecoverable to its pristine uprightness.
Injuries so compound confounded the Captain, who sorrowed to see a
creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an
excrescent shoulder. ' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents.
'The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their
indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct. . . . Of his
person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy. . . . "Were a
blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Arnaud] be it my
immediate dissolution. " "I think," said his mother, . . . "that you could
wish better. " "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I
ever had remained unborn. "' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and
views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to
throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He
goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew
himself to be interrogated. What he required. . . . What was that answer
the effects explain. . . . There passed in liveliest portraiture the
various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much
desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt
that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained
unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among
which glided by Alexander, Alcibiades, and Hephestion: at length
appeared the supernatural effigy of a man, whose perfections human
artist never could depict or insculp--Demetrius, the son of Antigonus.
Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within
his hand the resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his
breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point
through his heart, and underwent a painless death.
During his trance,
his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of
his admiration . . . Arnaud awoke a Julian! '"]
[202] {474}[For a _resume_ of M. G. Lewis's _Wood Demon_ (afterwards
re-cast as _One O'clock; or, The Knight and the Wood-Demon_, 1811), see
"First Visit to the Theatre in London," _Poems_, by Hartley Coleridge,
1851, i. , Appendix C, pp. cxcix. -cciii. The _Wood Demon_ in its original
form was never published. ]
[203] [Mrs. Shelley inscribed the following note on the fly-leaf of her
copy of _The Deformed Transformed_:--
"This had long been a favourite subject with Lord Byron. I think that he
mentioned it also in Switzerland. I copied it--he sending a portion of
it at a time, as it was finished, to me. At this time he had a great
horror of its being said that he plagiarised, or that he studied for
ideas, and wrote with difficulty. Thus he gave Shelley Aikins' edition
of the British poets, that it might not be found in his house by some
English lounger, and reported home; thus, too, he always dated when he
began and when he ended a poem, to prove hereafter how quickly it was
done. I do not think that he altered a line in this drama after he had
once written it down. He composed and corrected in his mind. I do not
know how he meant to finish it; but he said himself that the whole
conduct of the story was already conceived. It was at this time that a
brutal paragraph[*] alluding to his lameness appeared, which he repeated
to me lest I should hear it from some one else. No action of Lord
Byron's life--scarce a line he has written--but was influenced by his
personal defect. "
[*] It is possible that Mrs. Shelley alludes to a sentence in the
_Memoirs, etc. , of Lord Byron_. (by Dr. John Watkin), 1822, p. 46: "A
malformation of one of his feet, and other indications of a rickety
constitution, served as a plea for suffering him to range the hills and
to wander about at his pleasure on the seashore, that his frame might be
invigorated by air and exercise. "]
[cv] {477} _The Deformed--a drama. --B. Pisa, 1822_.
[204] [Moore (_Life_, p. 13) quotes these lines in connection with a
passage in Byron's "Memoranda," where, in speaking of his own
sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the
feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother,
in one of her fits of passion, called him "_a lame brat! _". . . "It may
be questioned," he adds, "whether that whole drama [_The Deformed
Transformed_] was not indebted for its origin to that single
recollection. "
Byron's early letters (_e. g. _ November 2, 11, 17, 1804, _Letters_, 1898,
i. 41, 45, 48) are full of complaints of his mother's "eccentric
behaviour," her "fits of phrenzy," her "caprices," "passions," and so
forth; and there is convincing proof--see _Life_, pp. 28, 306;
_Letters_, 1898, ii. 122 (incident at Bellingham's execution);
_Letters_, 1901, vi. 179 (_Le Diable Boiteux_)--that he regarded the
contraction of the muscles of his legs as a more or less repulsive
deformity. And yet, to quote one of a hundred testimonies,--"with regard
to Lord Byron's features, Mr. Mathews observed, that he was the only man
he ever contemplated, to whom he felt disposed to apply the word
_beautiful_" (_Memoirs of Charles Matthews_, 1838, ii. 380). The
looker-on or the consoler computes the magnitude and the liberality of
the compensation. The sufferer thinks only of his sufferings. ]
[205] {478}[So, too, Prospero to Caliban, _Tempest_, act i. sc. 2, line
309, etc. ]
[206] {479}[Compare--"Have not partook oppression. " _Marino Faliero_,
act i. sc. 2, line 468, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 362, note 1. ]
[207] {480}[Compare the story of the philosopher Jamblichus and the
raising of Eros and Anteros from their "fountain-dwellings. "--_Manfred_,
act ii. sc. 2, line 93, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 105, note 2. ]
[cw] {481} _Give me the strength of the buffalo's foot_ (_which marks
me_). --[MS. ]
[cx] _The sailless dromedary_----. --[MS. ]
[cy] {482} _Now I can gibe the mightiest_. --[MS. ]
[208] {483}[So, too, in _The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus_ (Marlowe's
_Works_, 1858, p. 112), Faustus stabs his arm, "and with his proper
blood Assures his soul to be great Lucifer's. "]
[cz]
_Walk lively and pliant_.
_You shall rise up as pliant_. --[MS, erased. ]
[209] This is a well-known German superstition--a gigantic shadow
produced by reflection on the Brocken. [See Brewster's _Letters on
Natural Magic_, 1831, p. 128. ]
[da] _And such my command_. --[MS. ]
[210] {484}["Nigris vegetisque oculis. "--Suetonius, _Vitae C. Julius
Caesar_, cap. xiv. , _Opera Omnia_, 1826, i. 105. ]
[211] [_Vide post_, p. 501, note 1. ]
[212] ["Sed ante alias [Julius Caesar] dilexit M. Bruti matrem Serviliam
. . . dilexit et reginas . . . sed maxime Cleopatram" (_ibid. _, i. 113,
115). Cleopatra, born B. C. 69, was twenty-one years old when she met
Caesar, B. C. 48. ]
[db]
_And can_
_It be? the man who shook the earth is gone_. --[MS. ]
[213] {485}["Upon the whole, it may be doubted whether there be a name
of Antiquity which comes down with such a general charm as that of
_Alcibiades_. _Why? _ I cannot answer: who can? "--_Detached Thoughts_
(1821), No. 108, _Letters_, 1901, v. 461. For Sir Walter Scott's note on
this passage, see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 77, 78, note 2. ]
[214] [The outside of Socrates was that of a satyr and buffoon, but his
soul was all virtue, and from within him came such divine and pathetic
things, as pierced the heart, and drew tears from the hearers. --Plato,
_Symp_. , p. 216, D. ]
[215] {486}["Anthony had a noble dignity of countenance, a graceful
length of beard, a large forehead, an aquiline nose: and, upon the
whole, the same manly aspect that we see in the pictures and statues of
Hercules. "--Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation, 1838, p. 634. ]
[216] [As in the "Farnese" Hercules. ]
[217] [The beauty and mien [of Demetrius Poliorcetes] were so inimitable
that no statuary or painter could hit off a likeness. His countenance
had a mixture of grace and dignity; and was at once amiable and awful;
and the unsubdued and eager air of youth was blended with the majesty of
the hero and the king. --Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation,
1838, p. 616.
Demetrius the Besieger rescued Greece from the sway of Ptolemy and
Cassander, B. C. 307. He passed the following winter at Athens, where
divine honours were paid to him under the title of "the Preserver" (?
? ? ? ? ? [o(Sote/r]). He was "the shame of Greece in peace," by reason of
his profligacy--"the citadel was so polluted with his debaucheries, that
it appeared to be kept sacred in some degree when he indulged himself
only with such _Hetaerae_ as Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra. " He was
the unspiritual ancestor of Charles the Second. Once when his father,
Antigonus, had been told that he was indisposed, "he went to see him;
and when he came to the door, he met one of his favourites going out. He
went in, however, and, sitting down by him, took hold of his hand. 'My
fever,' said Demetrius, 'has left me. ' 'I knew it,' said Antigonus, 'for
I met it this moment at the door. '"--Plutarch's _Lives_, _ibid. _, pp.
621-623. ]
[218] {488}[Spercheus was a river-god, the husband of Polydora, the
daughter of Peleus. Peleus casts into the river the hair of his son
Achilles, in the pious hope that his son-in-law would accept the votive
offering, and grant the youth a safe return from the Trojan war. See
_Iliad_, xxiii. 140, _sqq. _]
[219] {489}["Whosoever," says Bacon, "hath anything fixed in his person
that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to
rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons
are extreme bold; first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to
scorn, but in process of time by a general habit; also it stirreth in
them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the
weakness of others, that they may have somewhat to repay. " (Essay
xliv. ). Byron's "chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction was that
mark of deformity on his person, by an acute sense of which he was first
stung into the ambition of being great. "--_Life_, p. 306. ]
[220] [Timur Bey, or Timur Lang, _i. e. _ "the lame Timur" (A. D.
1336-1405), was the founder of the Mogul dynasty. He was the Tamerlane
of history and of legend. Byron had certainly read the selections from
Marlowe's _Tamburlaine the Great_, in Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets_. ]
[221] {491}["I am black, but comely. "--_Song of Solomon_ i. 5. ]
[222] Adam means "_red earth_," from which the first man was formed.
[The word _ad? m_ is said to be analogous to the Assyrian _admu_,
"child"--_i. e. _ "one made" by God. --_Encycl. Bibl. _, art. "Adam. "]
[dc] {492} _This shape into Life_. --[_MS_. ]
[223] {493}[The reference is to the _homunculi_ of the alchymists. See
Retzsch's illustrations to Goethe's _Faust_, 1834, plates 3, 4, 5.
Compare, too, _The Second Part of Faust_, act ii. --
"The glass rings low, the charming power that lives
Within it makes the music that it gives.
It dims! it brightens! it will shape itself.
And see! a graceful dazzling little elf.
He lives! he moves! spruce mannikin of fire,
What more can we? what more can earth desire? "
Anster's Translation, 1886, p. 91. ]
[dd] _Your Interloper_----. --[MS. ]
[224] {494}[Compare _Prisoner of Chillon_, stanza ii. line 35, _Poetical
Works_, 1091, iv. 15, note i. Compare, too, the dialogue between
Mephistopheles and the Will-o'-the Wisp, in the scene on the Hartz
Mountains, in _Faust_, Part I. (see Anster's Translation, 1886, p.
271). ]
[225] {495}[The immediate reference is to the composite forces, German,
French, and Spanish, of the Imperial Army under the command of Charles
de Bourbon: but there is in lines 498-507 a manifest allusion to the
revolutionary movements in South America, Italy, and Spain, which were
at their height in 1822. (See the _Age of Bronze_, section vi. lines
260, _sq.
