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+Project Gutenberg's A Day with Lord Byron, by May Clarissa Gillington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Day with Lord Byron
+
+Author: May Clarissa Gillington
+
+Release Date: June 27, 2010 [EBook #32990]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAY WITH LORD BYRON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Canada
+Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Day with Byron]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.
+
+  "She walks in beauty, like the night
+       Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
+   And all that's best of dark and bright
+       Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
+   Thus mellow'd to that tender light
+       Which heaven to gaudy day denies."
+                       (_Hebrew Melodies._)
+
+
+
+
+A DAY WITH LORD BYRON
+
+
+_by_
+
+
+M.C.
+GILLINGTON
+
+LONDON
+HODDER & STOUGHTON
+
+
+_In the same Series._
+
+  _Longfellow._
+  _Tennyson._
+  _Keats._
+  _Browning._
+  _Wordsworth._
+  _Burns._
+  _Scott._
+  _Shelley._
+
+
+
+
+A DAY WITH BYRON.
+
+
+One February afternoon in the year 1822, about two o'clock,--for this
+is the hour at which his day begins,--"the most notorious personality
+of his century" arouses himself, in the Palazzo Lanfranchi at Pisa.
+George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, languidly arises and dresses, with the
+assistance of his devoted valet Fletcher. Invariably he awakes in very
+low spirits, "in actual despair and despondency," he has termed it: this
+is in part constitutional, and partly, no doubt, a reaction after the
+feverish brain-work of the previous night. It is, at any rate, in
+unutterable melancholy and _ennui_ that he surveys in the mirror that
+slight and graceful form, which had been idolised by London drawing-rooms,
+and that pale, scornful, beautiful face, "like a spirit, good or evil,"
+which the enthusiastic Walter Scott has termed a thing to dream of. He
+notes the grey streaks already visible among his dark brown locks, and
+mutters his own lines miserably to himself,--
+
+  Through life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
+  I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty.
+  What have these years left to me?
+    Nothing--except thirty-three.
+
+An innumerable motley crowd of reminiscences--most of them bitter,
+sorrowful, or contemptuous, throng across his mind, shaping themselves
+into poignant verse:
+
+  There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
+  When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
+  'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
+  But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Oh! could I feel as I have felt,--or be what I have been,
+  Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanished scene;
+  As springs in desert found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
+  So, 'midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
+
+A meagre breakfast,--of claret and soda with a few mouthfuls of some
+Italian dish,--somewhat restores his natural vivacity: and he listens
+with cynical amusement to Fletcher's blood-curdling stories of the
+phantoms who have made night hideous. For the famous old feudal Palazzo,
+with its dungeons and secret chambers, has been immemorially infested
+with ghosts, and harassed by inexplicable noises. Fletcher has already
+begged leave to change his room, and then refused to occupy his new
+room, because, as his master reports, "there are more ghosts there than
+in the other!... There is one place where people were evidently walled
+up ... I am bothered about these spectres, as they say the last occupants
+were too." However, he is laughing as he descends the magnificent
+staircase,--the reputed work of Michael Angelo,--laughing until the
+shrill querulous cries of peevish children make him stop and frown. He
+has allowed the Leigh Hunts, with their large and fractious family, to
+occupy for the present the ground-floor of the Palazzo; and children
+are his pet abhorrence. "I abominate the sight of them so much," he has
+already told Moore, "that I have always had the greatest respect for
+the character of Herod!" No child figures in any of his poems: his own
+paternal feeling towards "Ada, sole daughter of my house and home," is
+merely a fluctuating sentiment.
+
+He shrugs his shoulders and enters his great _salon_, again moody and
+with a downcast air: and throws himself upon a couch in gloomy reverie.
+Snatches of poetry wander through his thoughts--poetry intrinsically
+autobiographical, for "the inequalities of his style are those of his
+career," and his imaginary heroes are endless reproductions of himself,
+"the wandering outlaw of his own dark mind." He has drawn his own
+picture more effectively in _Lara_ than any strange hand could do.
+
+  In him, inexplicably mix'd, appear'd
+  Much to be loved and hated, sought and fear'd;
+  Opinion, varying o'er his hidden lot,
+  In praise or railing ne'er his name forgot....
+
+  There was in him a vital scorn of all:
+  As if the worst had fall'n which could befall;
+  He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
+  An erring spirit from another hurl'd....
+
+  His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth,
+  And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth.
+
+His men, in short, as has been observed, are "made after his own image,
+and his women after his own heart." Yet the inveterate family likeness
+of these heroes is not shared by the heroines of his romantic stanzas:
+for Byron has an eclectic taste in beauty. One can hardly imagine a
+wider dissimilarity than between the _Bride of Abydos_, the gentle
+Zuleika, with her
+
+  "Nameless charms unmark'd by her alone--
+
+  The light of love, the purity of grace,
+  The mind, the music breathing from her face,
+  The heart whose softness harmonised the whole,
+  And oh! that eye was in itself a Soul."
+
+and "Circassia's daughter," the stately Leila of _The Giaour_, whose
+black and flowing hair "swept the marble where her feet gleamed whiter
+than the mountain sleet." Or, if the reader seek a further choice, there
+is Medora, beloved of the Corsair,--Medora of the deep blue eye and long
+fair hair; or the nameless Eastern maiden of the _Hebrew Melodies_:
+
+  She walks in beauty, like the night
+      Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
+  And all that's best of dark and bright
+      Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
+  Thus mellow'd to that tender light
+      Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
+
+  One shade the more, one ray the less,
+      Had half impair'd the nameless grace
+  Which waves in every raven tress,
+      Or softly lightens o'er her face;
+  Where thoughts serenely sweet express
+      How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
+
+  And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
+      So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
+  The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
+      But tell of days in goodness spent,
+  A mind at peace with all below,
+      A heart whose love is innocent!
+
+Yet all these heroines are alike in one respect--their potentiality of
+passionate emotion: since Byron's "passions and his powers," according
+to his intense admirer Shelley, "are incomparably greater than those of
+other men:" and he has used the last almost recklessly in portrayal of
+the first.
+
+As the poet reclines in sombre meditation, his reverie is broken by
+the not unwelcome entrance of his friends--who may be better termed
+his intimate acquaintances. For, to that brooding, introspective
+spirit,--constitutionally shy, and morbidly conscious of the
+fact,--"friendship is a propensity," he has declared, "to which my
+genius is very limited. I do not know the _male_ human being, except
+Lord Clare, the friend of my infancy, for whom I feel anything that
+deserves the name. All my others are men-of-the-world friendships."
+Be that as it may, it is with a warmly cordial expression, and with
+that peculiarly sweet smile of his, that Byron welcomes his usual
+visitors,--Captain Williams, Captain Medwin, Taafe the Irishman, and
+Percy Bysshe Shelley, "the most companionable person under thirty,"
+he has avowed, "that ever I knew." When they have discussed the latest
+little Pisan _on dits_, and the progress of Shelley's boat-building,
+the conversation trends more and more towards literary topics: personal
+topics, be it understood, for Byron is not an omnivorous reader like
+Shelley. Williams and Medwin, themselves dabblers in verse and prose,
+listen with respectful admiration to the _dicta_ of the great poets
+exchanging views. The low, clear, harmonious voice of Byron "is a sort
+of intoxication: men are held by it as under a spell." He makes no
+secret of his open contempt for the professional writing fraternity.
+"Who would write, if he had anything better to do?" he scornfully
+enquires, "I think the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by
+themselves and others, a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness."
+
+Shelley, whose assiduous studies in literature have led him to quite
+other conclusions, defends his craft with ardour. But Byron's chief
+successes have been too lightly won. He who wrote the _Corsair_ in ten
+days, the _Bride of Abydos_ in four, and _Lara_ whilst undressing after
+balls and masquerades, cannot be expected to take a very serious view of
+poetry as the one business of a lifetime. "I by no means rank poetry or
+poets," says he, "high in the scale of imagination. Poetry is the lava
+of the imagination, whose eruption prevents an earthquake. If I live ten
+years longer," he adds prophetically, "you will see that all is not over
+with me,--I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing, and, it may
+seem odd enough to say, I don't think it's my vocation. But you will see
+that I shall do _something_ or other!"
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  JUAN AND HAIDÉE.
+
+  "They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low,
+      And saw each other's dark eyes darting light
+  Into each other--and, beholding this,
+      Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss."
+                                        (_Don Juan._)
+
+
+This contemner of poesy, however, is soon persuaded, without much
+difficulty, to read aloud some excerpts from his new poems in process of
+completion: and very well he reads them. The listeners are moved to
+smiles by the bitter humour of the _Vision of Judgment_: they are left
+half breathless by the impetuous vigour of _Heaven and Earth_. But a
+murmur of unfeigned applause punctuates the second canto of _Don Juan_,
+with its exquisite presentment of youth, love, and ecstasy in the
+persons of Juan and Haidée.
+
+  It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded
+      Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill,
+  Which then seems as if the whole earth it bounded,
+      Circling all nature, hush'd, and dim, and still,
+  With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded
+      On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill,
+  Upon the other, and the rosy sky,
+  With one star sparkling through it like an eye.
+  And thus they wander'd forth, and hand in hand,
+      Over the shining pebbles and the shells,
+  Glided along the smooth and harden'd sand....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  They look'd up to the sky, whose floating glow
+      Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright;
+  They gazed upon the glittering sea below,
+      Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight;
+  They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low,
+      And saw each other's dark eyes darting light
+  Into each other--and, beholding this,
+  Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss.
+                                          (_Don Juan._)
+
+Byron's restless spirit, perpetually eager to express itself in
+action, now makes him anxious to dismiss intellectual discussions:
+and he hastily proposes a game of billiards. As he moves around the
+billiard-table, his lameness is distinctly noticeable: not all the
+ingenuity of his tailor, nor his own efforts to walk naturally, can
+conceal it. Yet, as has been said of him in other matters, he redeems
+all his defects by his graces. And his companions note with surprise the
+remarkable change for the better which has taken place in him since,
+a few months before, he arrived at this old palace on the Arno with a
+troop of servants, carriages, horses, fowls, dogs, and monkeys. The
+selfish and sensual Byron of Venetian days is entirely a thing of the
+past. "He is improved in every respect,"--says Shelley to Williams,
+"in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness." And
+although keeping up a certain splendour upon an income of £4000 a year,
+he devotes £1000 of that income entirely to purposes of charity. His own
+personal needs are of the simplest.
+
+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.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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._)
+
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+And although, it will be noticed, he exempts the sea--and although the
+blood of old sea-kings, running fiercely in his veins, still kindles him
+to imperishable rapture in its presence,--
+
+    And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
+        Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
+    Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
+        I wanton'd with thy breakers--they to me
+    Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
+        Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear,
+    For I was as it were a child of thee,
+      And trusted to thy billows far and near,
+  And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here.
+                                (_Childe Harold._)
+
+--yet there is sorrow on the sea itself,--the "unplumb'd, salt, estranging
+sea" which separates him from his mother-country. Cosmopolitan as he
+is, self-banished exile, quick with Greek and Italian sympathies,
+Byron never for one moment forgets that he is head of one of England's
+proudest families. Despite his scathing scorn towards his fair-weather
+London friends, towards the unreasoning outbursts of malignity which
+drove him out of his England--with all her faults, he loves her still.
+He vaguely hopes and hankers after a return to those long-lost shores:
+and endeavours to believe that the future will in some way make atonement
+for all the calamities of the past.
+
+But now Shelley, Williams, Medwin, and Taafe are dismounting in the pine
+forest, and the men-servants setting up the target. Pistol-practice
+is Byron's forte; when he hits a half-crown at twelve yards he is as
+delighted as a boy, and quite glum and disconcerted if he should happen
+to miss. This very rarely happens, as he is a crack shot, easily
+distancing the other competitors. His hand trembles violently, but he
+calculates on this vibration, and, depending entirely on his eye, hardly
+ever fails. After about an hour's shooting, the light begins to wane
+towards sunset: and the friends ride back to the city, Byron in exuberant
+good humour with himself and everybody else. Arrived at the Palazzo
+Lanfranchi, he finds two guests awaiting him,--Count Pietro Gamba,
+brother of the lovely Contessa Guiccioli, and Trelawny, that handsome,
+picturesque, piratical-looking "Younger Son," who has not yet published
+to an astonished world his remarkable and almost incredible "Adventures."
+Trelawny is at present in command of Byron's yacht the _Bolivar_, lying
+in the harbour of Genoa.
+
+The poet welcomes these new additions to his company: for, since his
+arrival in Pisa, he has begun to entertain men at dinner-parties, for
+the first time since leaving England. A very cheerful company sits down
+with him to dinner: their host displays himself to great advantage,
+"being at once," to quote Shelley, "polite and cordial, full of social
+hilarity and the most perfect good humour, never diverging into
+ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up the spirit of liveliness
+throughout the evening." Byron, according to his own declaration, has
+never passed two hours in mixed society without wishing himself out of
+it again. Nobody, however, could guess at this fact from his bright,
+frank, and spontaneous gaiety. Always an abstemious eater--"I have fed
+at times for over two months together," he assures his friends, "on
+sheer biscuit and water,"--very little food suffices him: and besides,
+_bien entendu_, he is anxious to retain that "happy slenderness" on
+which he prides himself,--the slenderness which is a characteristic
+of his family, and which he has recently endangered by a lazy life in
+Venice. The guests sit fascinated by his enthralling personality: they
+recognize that he wears a natural greatness which "his errors can only
+half obscure:" and they rivet their gaze upon that pale and splendid
+face, the only one, as Scott says, that ever came up to an artist's
+notion of what the lineaments of a poet should be. He looks around
+him upon the ethereal and feminine countenance of Shelley, the
+visionary,--the kind, pleasant, honest English faces of Medwin and
+Williams,--the good-looking Italian Gamba, the quaint little Irishman
+Taafe,--last, not least, the dark mustachios and wildly-flashing Celtic
+eyes of the Cornish adventurer Trelawny. This latter might well have
+served for a model of Conrad the Corsair: and so he is assured by his
+companions.
+
+  "Sun-burnt his cheek, his forehead high and pale
+   The sable curls in wild profusion veil....
+   His features' deepening lines and varying hue
+   At times attracted, yet perplex'd the view."
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ CONRAD AND GULNARE.
+
+  "Extreme in love or hate, in good or ill,
+   The worst of crimes had left her woman still!
+   This Conrad mark'd, and felt--ah! could he less?--
+   Hate of that deed, but grief for her distress."
+                                   _(The Corsair._)
+
+But where, they ask, shall the original of _Gulnare_ be found,--Gulnare,
+who stains her hand with the blood of her lord the Pasha, to save the
+Corsair from a dreadful death? Byron refuses to reveal his source of
+inspiration: but Shelley quotes with sincere approval the lines which
+most emphatically delineate that lovely, desperate woman.
+
+   Embark'd, the sail unfurl'd, the light breeze blew--
+   How much had Conrad's memory to review!...
+
+   He thought on her afar, his lovely bride:
+   He turned and saw--Gulnare, the homicide!
+
+   She watch'd his features till she could not bear
+   Their freezing aspect and averted air;
+   And that strange fierceness, foreign to her eye,
+   Fell quench'd in tears, too late to shed or dry.
+
+  "But for that deed of darkness what wert thou?
+   Reproach me--but not yet--O! spare me _now_!
+   I am not what I seem--this fearful night
+   My brain bewilder'd--do not madden quite!
+   If I had never loved, though less my guilt,
+   Thou hadst not lived to--hate me--if thou wilt."
+   Extreme in love or hate, in good or ill,
+   The worst of crimes had left her woman still!
+
+   This Conrad mark'd, and felt--ah! could he less?
+   Hate of that deed, but grief for her distress;
+   What she has done no tears could wash away,
+   And Heaven must punish on its angry day:
+   But--it was done: he knew, whate'er her guilt,
+   For him that poniard smote, that blood was spilt;
+   And he was free! and she for him had given
+   Her all on earth, and more than all in heaven!
+                                     (_The Corsair._)
+
+But--"Heavens, Shelley!" cries his host, "what infinite nonsense are you
+quoting?" and he hastily turns the current of conversation towards more
+impersonal subjects.
+
+The evening wears on: the guests depart: the clear spring moonlight
+streams upon the winding Arno. Byron stands dreaming at the open window,
+the bridges and buildings of Pisa lie still and silver-lit before him: a
+subtle influence of quietude steals down upon him from the stars. "What
+nothings we are," he murmurs, "before the least of these stars!" One in
+particular--is it Sirius?--entrances his attention with its cold
+refulgence of pure light. His thoughts involuntarily shape themselves in
+rhythm and rhyme;
+
+  Sun of the sleepless! melancholy star!
+  Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far,
+  That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel,
+  How like art thou to joy remember'd well!
+  So gleams the past, the light of other days,
+  Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;
+  A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
+  Distinct, but distant--clear--but oh! how cold!
+
+It is the hour when Byron's brain becomes thronged with a glowing
+phantasmagoria of ideas that cry aloud for visible expression. He
+forgets, under the stress of creative impulse, the sources and causes of
+his inherent melancholy,--the miserable days of his childhood, with a
+Fury for a mother,--the wound, never to be healed, of his unrequited
+love for Mary Chaworth,--the inimical wife from whom he is eternally
+alienated,--the little daughter that he may never hold in his arms,--the
+beloved sister separated from his side,--the ancestral home of his
+forefathers now passed into a stranger's hold,--the meteoric glory and
+total eclipse of his unparalleled popularity in England,--the follies,
+and worse than follies, which have made him what he is, "consistent in
+nothing but his passion and his pride." These memories, like poisonous
+exhalations, are banished from his mind, and leave a clear horizon for a
+while,--a fertile landscape peopled with great words and images.
+Something akin to inspiration seizes upon him: and he throws himself to
+work with all the zest and nerve of his impulsive nature.
+
+This is a man who writes, in his own phrase, "with rapidity and rarely
+with pains.... When I once take pen in hand, I _must_ say what comes
+uppermost or fling it away." Not for him that careful polishing of
+sentences, which other writers meticulously bestow. "I have always
+written as fast as I could put pen to paper, and never revised but in
+the proofs.... I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger; if I
+miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle." And to this
+impetuous directness of onslaught, his finest poems bear witness. Some
+critic has remarked that Byron is too much of the earth earthy to be a
+great lyrical writer: yet a Promethean fire, stolen from heaven, burns
+immortally through some of his shorter lyrics. In Greek, it is said,
+there are 1632 ways of expressing the simple fact _I love you_: yet who
+has ever put it in a more convincing form than Byron does in _Maid of
+Athens_?
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  MAID OF ATHENS.
+
+  By those tresses unconfined,
+  Woo'd by each Ægean wind;
+  By those lids whose jetty fringe
+  Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
+  By those wild eyes like the roe,
+  _Zöe mou, sas agapo_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Maid of Athens, ere we part,
+  Give, oh give me back my heart!
+  Or, since that has left my breast,
+  Keep it now, and take the rest!
+  Hear my vow before I go.
+  _Zöe mou, sas agapo._
+  (My life, I love you!)
+
+  By those tresses unconfined,
+  Woo'd by each Ægean wind;
+  By those lids whose jetty fringe
+  Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
+  By those wild eyes like the roe,
+  _Zöe mou, sas agapo_.
+
+  By that lip I long to taste;
+  By that zone-encircled waist;
+  By all the token-flowers that tell
+  What words can never speak so well;
+  By love's alternate joy and woe,
+  _Zöe mou, sas agapo_.
+
+  Maid of Athens! I am gone:
+  Think of me, sweet! when alone.
+  Though I fly to Istambol,
+  Athens holds my heart and soul:
+  Can I cease to love thee? No!
+  _Zöe mou, sas agapo._
+
+Rapidly as his pen flies over the paper, the torrent of throbbing
+thought flows faster still. Far on into the night, when ghostly noises
+echo through the sleeping palace, "that ever-gushing and perennial fount
+of natural waters," as Scott has described the genius of Byron, pours
+forth in reckless profusion. Until at last, outspent with energy, he
+draws a deep breath of exhaustion, and realizes that he is weariness
+itself. The moon has sunk in Arno: the stars are half-way across the
+sky: a cold glimmer of dawn is palpitating along the East, as Byron--
+
+  "Again to that accustom'd couch must creep
+  Where joy subsides, and sorrow sighs to sleep."
+
+After day's fitful fever he sleeps well: and rest, a few short hours of
+it, is due to that perturbed spirit, which now,
+
+  ... O'erlabour'd with his being's strife,
+  Shrinks to that sweet forgetfulness of life ...
+  That sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least.
+                                               (_Lara._)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ _Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., Ltd._,
+ _Bradford and London._
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's A Day with Lord Byron, by May Clarissa Gillington
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+Title: A Day with Lord Byron
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+Author: May Clarissa Gillington
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+Release Date: June 27, 2010 [EBook #32990]
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+Language: English
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+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Click to <a href="images/cover.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/front.jpg">
+      <img src="images/front.jpg" height="160"
+      alt="BOOK COVER" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  </table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>A DAY WITH LORD BYRON</h1>
+
+<h4><i>by</i></h4>
+
+<h2>M.C.</h2>
+<h2>GILLINGTON</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>LONDON</h4>
+
+<h4>HODDER &amp; STOUGHTON</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/tp.jpg">
+      <img src="images/tp.jpg" height="400"
+      alt="TITLE PAGE" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  </table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<p class="noindent"><b><i>In the same Series.</i></b></p>
+<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="ad">
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Longfellow.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Tennyson.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Keats.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Browning.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Wordsworth.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Burns.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Scott.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Shelley.</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+      <img src="images/frontis.jpg" height="470"
+      alt="SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Click to <a href="images/frontis.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span><br />&nbsp;
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><th align="right" valign="top"><small>SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.<br />
+</small></th></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>"She walks in beauty, like the night</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="ind2"><small>Of cloudless climes and starry skies;</small></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>And all that's best of dark and bright</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="ind2"><small>Meet in her aspect and her eyes:</small></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>Thus mellow'd to that tender light</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="ind2"><small>Which heaven to gaudy day denies."</small></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><small><i>(Hebrew  Melodies.)</i></small><br />
+&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>A DAY WITH BYRON.</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><img class="left" src="images/dropo.png" height="120" alt="O" title="" />ne February afternoon in the
+year 1822, about two o'clock,&mdash;for
+this is the hour at which his
+day begins,&mdash;"the most notorious
+personality of his century"
+arouses himself, in the Palazzo
+Lanfranchi at Pisa. George
+Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, languidly arises
+and dresses, with the assistance of his devoted
+valet Fletcher. Invariably he awakes in very
+low spirits, "in actual despair and despondency,"
+he has termed it: this is in part constitutional,
+and partly, no doubt, a reaction after the
+feverish brain-work of the previous night. It
+is, at any rate, in unutterable melancholy and
+<i>ennui</i> that he surveys in the mirror that slight
+and graceful form, which had been idolised by
+London drawing-rooms, and that pale, scornful,
+beautiful face, "like a spirit, good or evil,"
+which the enthusiastic Walter Scott has termed
+a thing to dream of. He notes the grey streaks
+already visible among his dark brown locks, and
+mutters his own lines miserably to himself,&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">Through life's dull road, so dim and dirty,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">What have these years left to me?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">Nothing&mdash;except thirty-three.</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">An innumerable motley crowd of reminiscences&mdash;most
+of them bitter, sorrowful, or contemptuous,
+throng across his mind, shaping themselves
+into poignant verse:</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top">There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top">When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top">'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top">But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">.<span class="ind1">.</span><span class="ind1">.</span><span class="ind1">.</span><span class="ind1">.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Oh! could I feel as I have felt,&mdash;or be what I have been,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanished scene;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">As springs in desert found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">So, 'midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">A meagre breakfast,&mdash;of claret and soda with a
+few mouthfuls of some Italian dish,&mdash;somewhat
+restores his natural vivacity: and he listens
+with cynical amusement to Fletcher's blood-curdling
+stories of the phantoms who have made
+night hideous. For the famous old feudal
+Palazzo, with its dungeons and secret chambers,
+has been immemorially  infested with ghosts,
+and harassed by inexplicable noises. Fletcher
+has already begged leave to change his room,
+and then refused to occupy his new room,
+because, as his master reports, "there are more
+ghosts there than in the other!&hellip; There
+is one place where people were evidently
+walled up.&hellip; I am bothered about these
+spectres, as they say the last occupants were
+too." However, he is laughing as he descends
+the magnificent staircase,&mdash;the reputed work
+of Michael Angelo,&mdash;laughing until the shrill
+querulous cries of peevish children make him
+stop and frown. He has allowed the Leigh
+Hunts, with their large and fractious family, to
+occupy for the present the ground-floor of the
+Palazzo; and children are his pet abhorrence.
+"I abominate the sight of them so much," he
+has already told Moore, "that I have always
+had the greatest respect for the character of
+Herod!" No child figures in any of his poems:
+his own paternal feeling towards "Ada, sole
+daughter of my house and home," is merely a
+fluctuating sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugs his shoulders and enters his great
+<i>salon</i>, again moody and with a downcast air:
+and throws himself upon a couch in gloomy
+reverie. Snatches of poetry wander through
+his thoughts&mdash;poetry intrinsically autobiographical,
+for "the inequalities of his style are
+those of his career," and his imaginary heroes
+are endless reproductions of himself, "the
+wandering outlaw of his own dark mind." He
+has drawn his own picture more effectively in
+<i>Lara</i> than any strange hand could do.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">In him, inexplicably mix'd, appear'd</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Much to be loved and hated, sought and fear'd;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Opinion, varying o'er his hidden lot,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">In praise or railing ne'er his name forgot&hellip;.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">There was in him a vital scorn of all:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">As if the worst had fall'n which could befall;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">He stood a stranger in this breathing world,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">An erring spirit from another hurl'd&hellip;.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">His men, in short, as has been observed, are
+"made after his own image, and his women
+after his own heart." Yet the inveterate family
+likeness of these heroes is not shared by the
+heroines of his romantic stanzas: for Byron
+has an eclectic taste in beauty. One can hardly
+imagine a wider dissimilarity than between the
+<i>Bride of Abydos</i>, the gentle Zuleika, with her
+</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">"Nameless charms unmark'd by her alone&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The light of love, the purity of grace,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The mind, the music breathing from her face,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The heart whose softness harmonised the whole,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And oh! that eye was in itself a Soul."</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">and "Circassia's daughter," the stately Leila of
+<i>The Giaour</i>, whose black and flowing hair "swept
+the marble where her feet gleamed whiter
+than the mountain sleet." Or, if the reader seek
+a further choice, there is Medora, beloved of
+the Corsair,&mdash;Medora of the deep blue eye and
+long fair hair; or the nameless Eastern maiden
+of the <i>Hebrew Melodies</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">She walks in beauty, like the night</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Of cloudless climes and starry skies;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And all that's best of dark and bright</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Meet in her aspect and her eyes:</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Thus mellow'd to that tender light</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Which heaven to gaudy day denies.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">One shade the more, one ray the less,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Had half impair'd the nameless grace</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Which waves in every raven tress,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Or softly lightens o'er her face;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Where thoughts serenely sweet express</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The smiles that win, the tints that glow,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">But tell of days in goodness spent,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A mind at peace with all below,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">A heart whose love is innocent!</span></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet all these heroines are alike in one respect&mdash;their
+potentiality of passionate emotion:
+since Byron's "passions and his powers,"
+according to his intense admirer Shelley, "are
+incomparably greater than those of other men:"
+and he has used the last almost recklessly in
+portrayal of the first.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>As the poet reclines in sombre meditation,
+his reverie is broken by the not unwelcome
+entrance of his friends&mdash;who may be better
+termed his intimate acquaintances. For, to that
+brooding, introspective spirit,&mdash;constitutionally
+shy, and morbidly conscious of the fact,&mdash;"friendship
+is a propensity," he has declared,
+"to which my genius is very limited. I do not
+know the <i>male</i> human being, except Lord Clare,
+the friend of my infancy, for whom I feel anything
+that deserves the name. All my others
+are men-of-the-world friendships." Be that as
+it may, it is with a warmly cordial expression,
+and with that peculiarly sweet smile of his, that
+Byron welcomes his usual visitors,&mdash;Captain
+Williams, Captain Medwin, Taafe the Irishman,
+and Percy Bysshe Shelley, "the most companionable
+person under thirty," he has avowed,
+"that ever I knew." When they have discussed
+the latest little Pisan <i>on dits</i>, and the progress
+of Shelley's boat-building, the conversation
+trends more and more towards literary topics:
+personal topics, be it understood, for Byron
+is not an omnivorous reader like Shelley.
+Williams and Medwin, themselves dabblers in
+verse and prose, listen with respectful admiration
+to the <i>dicta</i> of the great poets exchanging
+views. The low, clear, harmonious voice of
+Byron "is a sort of intoxication: men are held
+by it as under a spell." He makes no secret of
+his open contempt for the professional writing
+fraternity. "Who would write, if he had anything
+better to do?" he scornfully enquires, "I
+think the mighty stir made about scribbling and
+scribes, by themselves  and  others, a sign of
+effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness."</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Shelley, whose assiduous studies in literature
+have led him to quite other conclusions,
+defends his craft with ardour. But Byron's
+chief successes have been too lightly won. He
+who wrote the <i>Corsair</i> in ten days, the <i>Bride of
+Abydos</i> in four, and <i>Lara</i> whilst undressing after
+balls and masquerades, cannot be expected to
+take a very serious view of poetry as the one
+business of a lifetime. "I by no means rank
+poetry or poets," says he, "high in the scale
+of imagination. Poetry is the lava of the imagination,
+whose eruption prevents an earthquake.
+If I live ten years longer," he adds
+prophetically, "you will see that all is not
+over with me,&mdash;I don't mean in literature,
+for that is nothing, and, it may seem odd
+enough to say, I don't think it's my vocation.
+But you will see that I shall do <i>something</i> or
+other!"</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/img014.jpg">
+      <img src="images/img014.jpg" height="470"
+      alt="JUAN AND HAID&Eacute;E" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Click to <a href="images/img014.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span><br />&nbsp;
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><th align="right"><small>JUAN AND HAID&Eacute;E.</small><br /></th></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>"They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low,</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="ind2"><small>And saw each other's dark eyes darting light</small></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>Into each other&mdash;and, beholding this,</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="ind2"><small>Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss."</small></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><small><i>(Don Juan.)</i></small></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This contemner of poesy, however, is soon
+persuaded, without much difficulty, to read
+aloud some excerpts from his new poems in
+process of completion: and very well he reads
+them. The listeners are moved to smiles by
+the bitter humour of the <i>Vision of Judgment</i>:
+they are left half breathless by the impetuous
+vigour of <i>Heaven and Earth</i>. But a murmur of
+unfeigned applause punctuates the second canto
+of <i>Don Juan</i>, with its exquisite presentment of
+youth, love, and ecstasy in the persons of Juan
+and Haid&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Which then seems as if the whole earth it bounded,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Circling all nature, hush'd, and dim, and still,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Upon the other, and the rosy sky,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">With one star sparkling through it like an eye.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And thus they wander'd forth, and hand in hand,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Over the shining pebbles and the shells,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Glided along the smooth and harden'd sand&hellip;.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">.<span class="ind1">.</span><span class="ind1">.</span><span class="ind1">.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">They look'd up to the sky, whose floating glow</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">They gazed upon the glittering sea below,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">And saw each other's dark eyes darting light</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Into each other&mdash;and, beholding this,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><small><i>(Don Juan.)</i></small></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>Byron's restless spirit, perpetually eager
+to express itself in action, now makes him
+anxious to dismiss intellectual discussions: and
+he hastily proposes a game of billiards. As he
+moves around the billiard-table, his lameness is
+distinctly noticeable: not all the ingenuity of
+his tailor, nor his own efforts to walk naturally,
+can conceal it. Yet, as has been said of him in
+other matters, he redeems all his defects by his
+graces. And his companions note with surprise
+the remarkable change for the better which has
+taken place in him since, a few months before,
+he arrived at this old palace on the Arno with
+a troop of servants, carriages, horses, fowls,
+dogs, and monkeys. The selfish and sensual
+Byron of Venetian days is entirely a thing of
+the past. "He is improved in every respect,"&mdash;says
+Shelley to Williams, "in genius, in temper,
+in moral views, in health and happiness." And
+although keeping up a certain splendour upon
+an income of &pound;4000 a year, he devotes &pound;1000 of
+that income entirely to purposes of charity.
+His own personal needs are of the simplest.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>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,&mdash;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 <i>Childe Harold</i>, with their dazzling panoramic
+succession of vivid scenes: whether depicting
+how</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">A palace and a prison on each hand:</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I saw from out the wave her structures rise</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand.</span></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">or, on the eve of Waterloo,</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">There was a sound of revelry by night,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">And Belgium's capital had gather'd then</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A thousand hearts beat happily; and when</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Music arose with its voluptuous swell,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">And all went merry as a marriage bell;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">whether again, in the "vale of vintage,"</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">The castled crag of Drachenfels</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Whose breast of waters broadly swells</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Between the banks which bear the vine,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And hills all rich with blossom'd trees,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">.<span class="ind1">.</span><span class="ind1">.</span><span class="ind1">.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">And hands which offer early flowers,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Walk smiling o'er this paradise.</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">or, looking backwards through a score of centuries,</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">I see before me the Gladiator lie:</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind4">He leans upon his hand&mdash;his manly brow</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Consents to death, but conquers agony,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind4">And his droop'd head sinks gradually low&mdash;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind4">From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind4">The arena swims around him&mdash;he is gone,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/img029.jpg">
+      <img src="images/img029.jpg" height="470"
+      alt="THE PRISONER OF CHILLON AND THE BIRD" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Click to <a href="images/img029.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span><br />&nbsp;
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<div class="center">
+<table class="sm" border="0" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><th align="left"><small>THE PRISONER OF CHILLON AND THE BIRD</small><br /></th></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>"Thro' the crevice where it came,</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame,</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="ind2"><small>And tamer than upon the tree;</small></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>A lovely bird, with azure wings,</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small>And song that said a thousand things,</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><small><span class="ind2">And seem'd to say them all for me!"</span></small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><small><i>(The Prisoner of Chillon.)</i></small></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>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,&mdash;which
+breathes a Western vigour into the scented air
+of the Orient, and thrills with poignant pathos
+through the horrors of the <i>Prisoner of Chillon</i>.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">A light broke in upon my brain&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">It was the carol of a bird;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">It ceased, and then it came again,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">The sweetest song ear ever heard:</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And mine was thankful till my eyes</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Ran over with the glad surprise,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And they that moment could not see</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I was the mate of misery;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">But then by dull degrees came back</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">My senses to their wonted track;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I saw the dungeon walls and floor</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Close slowly round me as before,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I saw the glimmer of the sun</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Creeping as it before had done;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">But through the crevice where it came</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">And tamer than upon the tree;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A lovely bird, with azure wings,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And song that said a thousand things,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">And seem'd to say them all for me!</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I never saw its like before,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I ne'er shall see its likeness more:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">It seem'd like me to want a mate,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">But was not half so desolate,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And it was come to love me when</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">None lived to love me so again,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And cheering from my dungeon's brink,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Had brought me back to feel and think.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I know not if it late were free,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Or broke its cage to perch on mine,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">But knowing well captivity,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Or if it were, in winged guise,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A visitant from Paradise;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">For&mdash;Heaven forgive that thought! the while</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Which made me both to weep and smile&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I sometimes deem'd that it might be</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">My brother's soul come down to me;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">But then at last away it flew,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And then 'twas mortal well I knew,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">For he would never thus have flown,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And left me twice so doubly lone,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Lone as the corse within its shroud,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Lone as a solitary cloud,&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">A single cloud on a sunny day,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">While all the rest of heaven is clear,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A frown upon the atmosphere,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">That hath no business to appear</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">When skies are blue, and earth is gay.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><i>(The Prisoner of Chillon.)</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily, all these shifting scenes of imagination
+or experience&mdash;so the poet has made
+mournful confession&mdash;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."</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>And although, it will be noticed, he exempts
+the sea&mdash;and although the blood of old sea-kings,
+running fiercely in his veins, still kindles him to
+imperishable rapture in its presence,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind4">Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind4">I wanton'd with thy breakers&mdash;they to me</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">Were a delight; and if the freshening sea</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind4">Made them a terror&mdash;'twas a pleasing fear,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind2">For I was as it were a child of thee,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="ind4">And trusted to thy billows far and near,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And laid my hand upon thy mane&mdash;as I do here.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><i>(Childe Harold.)</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">&mdash;yet there is sorrow on the sea itself,&mdash;the
+"unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea" which separates
+him from his mother-country. Cosmopolitan
+as he is, self-banished exile, quick with
+Greek and Italian sympathies, Byron never for
+one moment forgets that he is head of one of
+England's proudest families. Despite his
+scathing scorn towards his fair-weather London
+friends, towards the unreasoning outbursts of
+malignity which drove him out of his England&mdash;with
+all her faults, he loves her still. He
+vaguely hopes and hankers after a return to
+those long-lost shores: and endeavours to believe
+that the future will in some way make atonement
+for all the calamities of the past.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>But now Shelley, Williams, Medwin, and
+Taafe are dismounting in the pine forest, and
+the men-servants setting up the target. Pistol-practice
+is Byron's forte; when he hits a half-crown
+at twelve yards he is as delighted as a
+boy, and quite glum and disconcerted if he
+should happen to miss. This very rarely
+happens, as he is a crack shot, easily distancing
+the other competitors. His hand trembles
+violently, but he calculates on this vibration,
+and, depending entirely on his eye, hardly ever
+fails. After about an hour's shooting, the light
+begins to wane towards sunset: and the friends
+ride back to the city, Byron in exuberant
+good humour with himself and everybody else.
+Arrived at the Palazzo Lanfranchi, he finds
+two guests awaiting him,&mdash;Count Pietro Gamba,
+brother of the lovely Contessa Guiccioli, and
+Trelawny, that handsome, picturesque, piratical-looking
+"Younger Son," who has not yet
+published to an astonished world his remarkable
+and almost incredible "Adventures."
+Trelawny is at present in command of Byron's
+yacht the <i>Bolivar</i>, lying in the harbour of
+Genoa.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The poet welcomes these new additions to
+his company: for, since his arrival in Pisa, he
+has begun to entertain men at dinner-parties,
+for the first time since leaving England. A
+very cheerful company sits down with him to
+dinner: their host displays himself to great
+advantage, "being at once," to quote Shelley,
+"polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and
+the most perfect good humour, never diverging
+into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up
+the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening."
+Byron, according to his own declaration, has
+never passed two hours in mixed society without
+wishing himself out of it again. Nobody,
+however, could guess at this fact from his bright,
+frank, and spontaneous gaiety. Always an
+abstemious eater&mdash;"I have fed at times for
+over two months together," he assures his
+friends, "on sheer biscuit and water,"&mdash;very
+little food suffices him: and besides, <i>bien entendu</i>,
+he is anxious to retain that "happy slenderness"
+on which he prides himself,&mdash;the slenderness
+which is a characteristic of his family, and which
+he has recently endangered by a lazy life in
+Venice. The guests sit fascinated by his enthralling
+personality: they recognize that he
+wears a natural greatness which "his errors
+can only half obscure:" and they rivet their
+gaze upon that pale and splendid face, the only
+one, as Scott says, that ever came up to an
+artist's notion of what the lineaments of a poet
+should be. He looks around him upon the
+ethereal and feminine countenance of Shelley,
+the visionary,&mdash;the kind, pleasant, honest
+English faces of Medwin and Williams,&mdash;the
+good-looking Italian Gamba, the quaint little
+Irishman Taafe,&mdash;last, not least, the dark
+mustachios and wildly-flashing Celtic eyes of the
+Cornish adventurer Trelawny. This latter
+might well have served for a model of Conrad
+the Corsair: and so he is assured by his companions.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">"Sun-burnt his cheek, his forehead high and pale</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The sable curls in wild profusion veil&hellip;.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">His features' deepening lines and varying hue</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">At times attracted, yet perplex'd the view."</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/img032.jpg">
+      <img src="images/img032.jpg" height="470"
+      alt="CONRAD AND GULNARE" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Click to <a href="images/img032.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span><br />&nbsp;
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<div class="center">
+<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><th align="right"><small>CONRAD AND GULNARE.</small><br /></th></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"Extreme in love or hate, in good or ill,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The worst of crimes had left her woman still!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">This Conrad mark'd, and felt&mdash;ah! could he less?&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Hate of that deed, but grief for her distress."</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><small><i>(The Corsair.)</i></small></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>But where, they ask, shall the original of
+<i>Gulnare</i> be found,&mdash;Gulnare, who stains her
+hand with the blood of her lord the Pasha, to
+save the Corsair from a dreadful death? Byron
+refuses to reveal his source of inspiration: but
+Shelley quotes with sincere approval the lines
+which most emphatically delineate that lovely,
+desperate woman.
+</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">Embark'd, the sail unfurl'd, the light breeze blew&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">How much had Conrad's memory to review!&hellip;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">He thought on her afar, his lovely bride:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">He turned and saw&mdash;Gulnare, the homicide!</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">She watch'd his features till she could not bear</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Their freezing aspect and averted air;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And that strange fierceness, foreign to her eye,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Fell quench'd in tears, too late to shed or dry.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"But for that deed of darkness what wert thou?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Reproach me&mdash;but not yet&mdash;O! spare me <i>now</i>!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">I am not what I seem&mdash;this fearful night</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">My brain bewilder'd&mdash;do not madden quite!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">If I had never loved, though less my guilt,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Thou hadst not lived to&mdash;hate me&mdash;if thou wilt."</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Extreme in love or hate, in good or ill,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The worst of crimes had left her woman still!</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">This Conrad mark'd, and felt&mdash;ah! could he less?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Hate of that deed, but grief for her distress;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">What she has done no tears could wash away,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And Heaven must punish on its angry day:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">But&mdash;it was done: he knew, whate'er her guilt,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">For him that poniard smote, that blood was spilt;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">And he was free! and she for him had given</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Her all on earth, and more than all in heaven!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><i>(The Corsair.)</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>But&mdash;"Heavens, Shelley!" cries his host, "what
+infinite nonsense are you quoting?" and he
+hastily turns the current of conversation towards
+more impersonal subjects.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The evening wears on: the guests depart:
+the clear spring moonlight streams upon the
+winding Arno. Byron stands dreaming at the
+open window, the bridges and buildings of Pisa
+lie still and silver-lit before him: a subtle influence
+of quietude steals down upon him from
+the stars. "What nothings we are," he
+murmurs, "before the least of these stars!" One
+in particular&mdash;is it Sirius?&mdash;entrances his
+attention with its cold refulgence of pure light.
+His thoughts involuntarily shape themselves in
+rhythm and rhyme;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">Sun of the sleepless! melancholy star!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">How like art thou to joy remember'd well!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">So gleams the past, the light of other days,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Distinct, but distant&mdash;clear&mdash;but oh! how cold!</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is the hour when Byron's brain becomes
+thronged with a glowing phantasmagoria of
+ideas that cry aloud for visible expression. He
+forgets, under the stress of creative impulse,
+the sources and causes of his inherent melancholy,&mdash;the
+miserable days of his childhood,
+with a Fury for a mother,&mdash;the wound, never
+to be healed, of his unrequited love for Mary
+Chaworth,&mdash;the inimical wife from whom he is
+eternally alienated,&mdash;the little daughter that he
+may never hold in his arms,&mdash;the beloved sister
+separated from his side,&mdash;the ancestral home of
+his forefathers now passed into a stranger's
+hold,&mdash;the meteoric glory and total eclipse of
+his unparalleled popularity in England,&mdash;the
+follies, and worse than follies, which have made
+him what he is, "consistent in nothing but his
+passion and his pride." These memories, like
+poisonous exhalations, are banished from his
+mind, and leave a clear horizon for a while,&mdash;a
+fertile landscape peopled with great words and
+images. Something akin to inspiration seizes
+upon him: and he throws himself to work
+with all the zest and nerve of his impulsive
+nature.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This is a man who writes, in his own phrase,
+"with rapidity and rarely with pains&hellip;.
+When I once take pen in hand, I <i>must</i> say
+what comes uppermost or fling it away." Not
+for him that careful polishing of sentences,
+which other writers meticulously bestow. "I
+have always written as fast as I could put pen
+to paper, and never revised but in the proofs&hellip;.
+I can never recast anything. I am like
+the tiger; if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling
+back to my jungle." And to this impetuous
+directness of onslaught, his finest poems
+bear witness. Some critic has remarked that
+Byron is too much of the earth earthy to be a
+great lyrical writer: yet a Promethean fire,
+stolen from heaven, burns immortally through
+some of his shorter lyrics. In Greek, it is said,
+there are 1632 ways of expressing the simple
+fact <i>I love you</i>: yet who has ever put it in a
+more convincing form than Byron does in <i>Maid
+of Athens</i>?</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/img040.jpg">
+      <img src="images/img040.jpg" height="470"
+      alt="MAID OF ATHENS" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Click to <a href="images/img040.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span><br />&nbsp;
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<div class="center">
+<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><th align="right"><small>MAID OF ATHENS</small><br /></th></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By those tresses unconfined,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Woo'd by each &AElig;gean wind;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By those lids whose jetty fringe</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By those wild eyes like the roe,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Z&ouml;e mou, sas agapo.</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">Maid of Athens, ere we part,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Give, oh give me back my heart!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Or, since that has left my breast,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Keep it now, and take the rest!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Hear my vow before I go.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Z&ouml;e mou, sas agapo.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">(My life, I love you!)</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By those tresses unconfined,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Woo'd by each &AElig;gean wind;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By those lids whose jetty fringe</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By those wild eyes like the roe,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Z&ouml;e mou, sas agapo</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By that lip I long to taste;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By that zone-encircled waist;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By all the token-flowers that tell</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">What words can never speak so well;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">By love's alternate joy and woe,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Z&ouml;e mou, sas agapo</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Maid of Athens! I am gone:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Think of me, sweet! when alone.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Though I fly to Istambol,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Athens holds my heart and soul:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Can I cease to love thee? No!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><i>Z&ouml;e mou, sas agapo.</i></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Rapidly as his pen flies over the paper, the
+torrent of throbbing thought flows faster still.
+Far on into the night, when ghostly noises echo
+through the sleeping palace, "that ever-gushing
+and perennial fount of natural waters," as Scott
+has described the genius of Byron, pours forth
+in reckless profusion. Until at last, outspent
+with energy, he draws a deep breath of exhaustion,
+and realizes that he is weariness itself.
+The moon has sunk in Arno: the stars
+are half-way across the sky: a cold glimmer
+of dawn is palpitating along the East, as
+Byron&mdash;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">"Again to that accustom'd couch must creep</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Where joy subsides, and sorrow sighs to sleep."</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>After day's fitful fever he sleeps well: and rest,
+a few short hours of it, is due to that perturbed
+spirit, which now,
+</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="poem">
+<tr><td align="left">&hellip;.O'erlabour'd with his being's strife,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Shrinks to that sweet forgetfulness of life&hellip;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">That sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><i>(Lara.)</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/tail.jpg">
+      <img src="images/tail.jpg" height="90"
+      alt="DECORATION" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="minimal" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h6><i>Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries &amp; Co., Ltd.,<br />
+Bradford and London.</i></h6>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" summary="Illustration">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/backcover.jpg">
+      <img src="images/backcover.jpg" height="200"
+      alt="DECORATION" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Day with Lord Byron, by May Clarissa Gillington
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,1062 @@
+Project Gutenberg's A Day with Lord Byron, by May Clarissa Gillington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Day with Lord Byron
+
+Author: May Clarissa Gillington
+
+Release Date: June 27, 2010 [EBook #32990]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAY WITH LORD BYRON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Canada
+Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Day with Byron]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.
+
+  "She walks in beauty, like the night
+       Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
+   And all that's best of dark and bright
+       Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
+   Thus mellow'd to that tender light
+       Which heaven to gaudy day denies."
+                       (_Hebrew Melodies._)
+
+
+
+
+A DAY WITH LORD BYRON
+
+
+_by_
+
+
+M.C.
+GILLINGTON
+
+LONDON
+HODDER & STOUGHTON
+
+
+_In the same Series._
+
+  _Longfellow._
+  _Tennyson._
+  _Keats._
+  _Browning._
+  _Wordsworth._
+  _Burns._
+  _Scott._
+  _Shelley._
+
+
+
+
+A DAY WITH BYRON.
+
+
+One February afternoon in the year 1822, about two o'clock,--for this
+is the hour at which his day begins,--"the most notorious personality
+of his century" arouses himself, in the Palazzo Lanfranchi at Pisa.
+George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, languidly arises and dresses, with the
+assistance of his devoted valet Fletcher. Invariably he awakes in very
+low spirits, "in actual despair and despondency," he has termed it: this
+is in part constitutional, and partly, no doubt, a reaction after the
+feverish brain-work of the previous night. It is, at any rate, in
+unutterable melancholy and _ennui_ that he surveys in the mirror that
+slight and graceful form, which had been idolised by London drawing-rooms,
+and that pale, scornful, beautiful face, "like a spirit, good or evil,"
+which the enthusiastic Walter Scott has termed a thing to dream of. He
+notes the grey streaks already visible among his dark brown locks, and
+mutters his own lines miserably to himself,--
+
+  Through life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
+  I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty.
+  What have these years left to me?
+    Nothing--except thirty-three.
+
+An innumerable motley crowd of reminiscences--most of them bitter,
+sorrowful, or contemptuous, throng across his mind, shaping themselves
+into poignant verse:
+
+  There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
+  When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
+  'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
+  But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Oh! could I feel as I have felt,--or be what I have been,
+  Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanished scene;
+  As springs in desert found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
+  So, 'midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
+
+A meagre breakfast,--of claret and soda with a few mouthfuls of some
+Italian dish,--somewhat restores his natural vivacity: and he listens
+with cynical amusement to Fletcher's blood-curdling stories of the
+phantoms who have made night hideous. For the famous old feudal Palazzo,
+with its dungeons and secret chambers, has been immemorially infested
+with ghosts, and harassed by inexplicable noises. Fletcher has already
+begged leave to change his room, and then refused to occupy his new
+room, because, as his master reports, "there are more ghosts there than
+in the other!... There is one place where people were evidently walled
+up ... I am bothered about these spectres, as they say the last occupants
+were too." However, he is laughing as he descends the magnificent
+staircase,--the reputed work of Michael Angelo,--laughing until the
+shrill querulous cries of peevish children make him stop and frown. He
+has allowed the Leigh Hunts, with their large and fractious family, to
+occupy for the present the ground-floor of the Palazzo; and children
+are his pet abhorrence. "I abominate the sight of them so much," he has
+already told Moore, "that I have always had the greatest respect for
+the character of Herod!" No child figures in any of his poems: his own
+paternal feeling towards "Ada, sole daughter of my house and home," is
+merely a fluctuating sentiment.
+
+He shrugs his shoulders and enters his great _salon_, again moody and
+with a downcast air: and throws himself upon a couch in gloomy reverie.
+Snatches of poetry wander through his thoughts--poetry intrinsically
+autobiographical, for "the inequalities of his style are those of his
+career," and his imaginary heroes are endless reproductions of himself,
+"the wandering outlaw of his own dark mind." He has drawn his own
+picture more effectively in _Lara_ than any strange hand could do.
+
+  In him, inexplicably mix'd, appear'd
+  Much to be loved and hated, sought and fear'd;
+  Opinion, varying o'er his hidden lot,
+  In praise or railing ne'er his name forgot....
+
+  There was in him a vital scorn of all:
+  As if the worst had fall'n which could befall;
+  He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
+  An erring spirit from another hurl'd....
+
+  His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth,
+  And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth.
+
+His men, in short, as has been observed, are "made after his own image,
+and his women after his own heart." Yet the inveterate family likeness
+of these heroes is not shared by the heroines of his romantic stanzas:
+for Byron has an eclectic taste in beauty. One can hardly imagine a
+wider dissimilarity than between the _Bride of Abydos_, the gentle
+Zuleika, with her
+
+  "Nameless charms unmark'd by her alone--
+
+  The light of love, the purity of grace,
+  The mind, the music breathing from her face,
+  The heart whose softness harmonised the whole,
+  And oh! that eye was in itself a Soul."
+
+and "Circassia's daughter," the stately Leila of _The Giaour_, whose
+black and flowing hair "swept the marble where her feet gleamed whiter
+than the mountain sleet." Or, if the reader seek a further choice, there
+is Medora, beloved of the Corsair,--Medora of the deep blue eye and long
+fair hair; or the nameless Eastern maiden of the _Hebrew Melodies_:
+
+  She walks in beauty, like the night
+      Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
+  And all that's best of dark and bright
+      Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
+  Thus mellow'd to that tender light
+      Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
+
+  One shade the more, one ray the less,
+      Had half impair'd the nameless grace
+  Which waves in every raven tress,
+      Or softly lightens o'er her face;
+  Where thoughts serenely sweet express
+      How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
+
+  And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
+      So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
+  The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
+      But tell of days in goodness spent,
+  A mind at peace with all below,
+      A heart whose love is innocent!
+
+Yet all these heroines are alike in one respect--their potentiality of
+passionate emotion: since Byron's "passions and his powers," according
+to his intense admirer Shelley, "are incomparably greater than those of
+other men:" and he has used the last almost recklessly in portrayal of
+the first.
+
+As the poet reclines in sombre meditation, his reverie is broken by
+the not unwelcome entrance of his friends--who may be better termed
+his intimate acquaintances. For, to that brooding, introspective
+spirit,--constitutionally shy, and morbidly conscious of the
+fact,--"friendship is a propensity," he has declared, "to which my
+genius is very limited. I do not know the _male_ human being, except
+Lord Clare, the friend of my infancy, for whom I feel anything that
+deserves the name. All my others are men-of-the-world friendships."
+Be that as it may, it is with a warmly cordial expression, and with
+that peculiarly sweet smile of his, that Byron welcomes his usual
+visitors,--Captain Williams, Captain Medwin, Taafe the Irishman, and
+Percy Bysshe Shelley, "the most companionable person under thirty,"
+he has avowed, "that ever I knew." When they have discussed the latest
+little Pisan _on dits_, and the progress of Shelley's boat-building,
+the conversation trends more and more towards literary topics: personal
+topics, be it understood, for Byron is not an omnivorous reader like
+Shelley. Williams and Medwin, themselves dabblers in verse and prose,
+listen with respectful admiration to the _dicta_ of the great poets
+exchanging views. The low, clear, harmonious voice of Byron "is a sort
+of intoxication: men are held by it as under a spell." He makes no
+secret of his open contempt for the professional writing fraternity.
+"Who would write, if he had anything better to do?" he scornfully
+enquires, "I think the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by
+themselves and others, a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness."
+
+Shelley, whose assiduous studies in literature have led him to quite
+other conclusions, defends his craft with ardour. But Byron's chief
+successes have been too lightly won. He who wrote the _Corsair_ in ten
+days, the _Bride of Abydos_ in four, and _Lara_ whilst undressing after
+balls and masquerades, cannot be expected to take a very serious view of
+poetry as the one business of a lifetime. "I by no means rank poetry or
+poets," says he, "high in the scale of imagination. Poetry is the lava
+of the imagination, whose eruption prevents an earthquake. If I live ten
+years longer," he adds prophetically, "you will see that all is not over
+with me,--I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing, and, it may
+seem odd enough to say, I don't think it's my vocation. But you will see
+that I shall do _something_ or other!"
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  JUAN AND HAIDEE.
+
+  "They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low,
+      And saw each other's dark eyes darting light
+  Into each other--and, beholding this,
+      Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss."
+                                        (_Don Juan._)
+
+
+This contemner of poesy, however, is soon persuaded, without much
+difficulty, to read aloud some excerpts from his new poems in process of
+completion: and very well he reads them. The listeners are moved to
+smiles by the bitter humour of the _Vision of Judgment_: they are left
+half breathless by the impetuous vigour of _Heaven and Earth_. But a
+murmur of unfeigned applause punctuates the second canto of _Don Juan_,
+with its exquisite presentment of youth, love, and ecstasy in the
+persons of Juan and Haidee.
+
+  It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded
+      Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill,
+  Which then seems as if the whole earth it bounded,
+      Circling all nature, hush'd, and dim, and still,
+  With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded
+      On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill,
+  Upon the other, and the rosy sky,
+  With one star sparkling through it like an eye.
+  And thus they wander'd forth, and hand in hand,
+      Over the shining pebbles and the shells,
+  Glided along the smooth and harden'd sand....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  They look'd up to the sky, whose floating glow
+      Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright;
+  They gazed upon the glittering sea below,
+      Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight;
+  They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low,
+      And saw each other's dark eyes darting light
+  Into each other--and, beholding this,
+  Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss.
+                                          (_Don Juan._)
+
+Byron's restless spirit, perpetually eager to express itself in
+action, now makes him anxious to dismiss intellectual discussions:
+and he hastily proposes a game of billiards. As he moves around the
+billiard-table, his lameness is distinctly noticeable: not all the
+ingenuity of his tailor, nor his own efforts to walk naturally, can
+conceal it. Yet, as has been said of him in other matters, he redeems
+all his defects by his graces. And his companions note with surprise the
+remarkable change for the better which has taken place in him since,
+a few months before, he arrived at this old palace on the Arno with a
+troop of servants, carriages, horses, fowls, dogs, and monkeys. The
+selfish and sensual Byron of Venetian days is entirely a thing of the
+past. "He is improved in every respect,"--says Shelley to Williams,
+"in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness." And
+although keeping up a certain splendour upon an income of L4000 a year,
+he devotes L1000 of that income entirely to purposes of charity. His own
+personal needs are of the simplest.
+
+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.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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._)
+
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+And although, it will be noticed, he exempts the sea--and although the
+blood of old sea-kings, running fiercely in his veins, still kindles him
+to imperishable rapture in its presence,--
+
+    And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
+        Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
+    Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
+        I wanton'd with thy breakers--they to me
+    Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
+        Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear,
+    For I was as it were a child of thee,
+      And trusted to thy billows far and near,
+  And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here.
+                                (_Childe Harold._)
+
+--yet there is sorrow on the sea itself,--the "unplumb'd, salt, estranging
+sea" which separates him from his mother-country. Cosmopolitan as he
+is, self-banished exile, quick with Greek and Italian sympathies,
+Byron never for one moment forgets that he is head of one of England's
+proudest families. Despite his scathing scorn towards his fair-weather
+London friends, towards the unreasoning outbursts of malignity which
+drove him out of his England--with all her faults, he loves her still.
+He vaguely hopes and hankers after a return to those long-lost shores:
+and endeavours to believe that the future will in some way make atonement
+for all the calamities of the past.
+
+But now Shelley, Williams, Medwin, and Taafe are dismounting in the pine
+forest, and the men-servants setting up the target. Pistol-practice
+is Byron's forte; when he hits a half-crown at twelve yards he is as
+delighted as a boy, and quite glum and disconcerted if he should happen
+to miss. This very rarely happens, as he is a crack shot, easily
+distancing the other competitors. His hand trembles violently, but he
+calculates on this vibration, and, depending entirely on his eye, hardly
+ever fails. After about an hour's shooting, the light begins to wane
+towards sunset: and the friends ride back to the city, Byron in exuberant
+good humour with himself and everybody else. Arrived at the Palazzo
+Lanfranchi, he finds two guests awaiting him,--Count Pietro Gamba,
+brother of the lovely Contessa Guiccioli, and Trelawny, that handsome,
+picturesque, piratical-looking "Younger Son," who has not yet published
+to an astonished world his remarkable and almost incredible "Adventures."
+Trelawny is at present in command of Byron's yacht the _Bolivar_, lying
+in the harbour of Genoa.
+
+The poet welcomes these new additions to his company: for, since his
+arrival in Pisa, he has begun to entertain men at dinner-parties, for
+the first time since leaving England. A very cheerful company sits down
+with him to dinner: their host displays himself to great advantage,
+"being at once," to quote Shelley, "polite and cordial, full of social
+hilarity and the most perfect good humour, never diverging into
+ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up the spirit of liveliness
+throughout the evening." Byron, according to his own declaration, has
+never passed two hours in mixed society without wishing himself out of
+it again. Nobody, however, could guess at this fact from his bright,
+frank, and spontaneous gaiety. Always an abstemious eater--"I have fed
+at times for over two months together," he assures his friends, "on
+sheer biscuit and water,"--very little food suffices him: and besides,
+_bien entendu_, he is anxious to retain that "happy slenderness" on
+which he prides himself,--the slenderness which is a characteristic
+of his family, and which he has recently endangered by a lazy life in
+Venice. The guests sit fascinated by his enthralling personality: they
+recognize that he wears a natural greatness which "his errors can only
+half obscure:" and they rivet their gaze upon that pale and splendid
+face, the only one, as Scott says, that ever came up to an artist's
+notion of what the lineaments of a poet should be. He looks around
+him upon the ethereal and feminine countenance of Shelley, the
+visionary,--the kind, pleasant, honest English faces of Medwin and
+Williams,--the good-looking Italian Gamba, the quaint little Irishman
+Taafe,--last, not least, the dark mustachios and wildly-flashing Celtic
+eyes of the Cornish adventurer Trelawny. This latter might well have
+served for a model of Conrad the Corsair: and so he is assured by his
+companions.
+
+  "Sun-burnt his cheek, his forehead high and pale
+   The sable curls in wild profusion veil....
+   His features' deepening lines and varying hue
+   At times attracted, yet perplex'd the view."
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ CONRAD AND GULNARE.
+
+  "Extreme in love or hate, in good or ill,
+   The worst of crimes had left her woman still!
+   This Conrad mark'd, and felt--ah! could he less?--
+   Hate of that deed, but grief for her distress."
+                                   _(The Corsair._)
+
+But where, they ask, shall the original of _Gulnare_ be found,--Gulnare,
+who stains her hand with the blood of her lord the Pasha, to save the
+Corsair from a dreadful death? Byron refuses to reveal his source of
+inspiration: but Shelley quotes with sincere approval the lines which
+most emphatically delineate that lovely, desperate woman.
+
+   Embark'd, the sail unfurl'd, the light breeze blew--
+   How much had Conrad's memory to review!...
+
+   He thought on her afar, his lovely bride:
+   He turned and saw--Gulnare, the homicide!
+
+   She watch'd his features till she could not bear
+   Their freezing aspect and averted air;
+   And that strange fierceness, foreign to her eye,
+   Fell quench'd in tears, too late to shed or dry.
+
+  "But for that deed of darkness what wert thou?
+   Reproach me--but not yet--O! spare me _now_!
+   I am not what I seem--this fearful night
+   My brain bewilder'd--do not madden quite!
+   If I had never loved, though less my guilt,
+   Thou hadst not lived to--hate me--if thou wilt."
+   Extreme in love or hate, in good or ill,
+   The worst of crimes had left her woman still!
+
+   This Conrad mark'd, and felt--ah! could he less?
+   Hate of that deed, but grief for her distress;
+   What she has done no tears could wash away,
+   And Heaven must punish on its angry day:
+   But--it was done: he knew, whate'er her guilt,
+   For him that poniard smote, that blood was spilt;
+   And he was free! and she for him had given
+   Her all on earth, and more than all in heaven!
+                                     (_The Corsair._)
+
+But--"Heavens, Shelley!" cries his host, "what infinite nonsense are you
+quoting?" and he hastily turns the current of conversation towards more
+impersonal subjects.
+
+The evening wears on: the guests depart: the clear spring moonlight
+streams upon the winding Arno. Byron stands dreaming at the open window,
+the bridges and buildings of Pisa lie still and silver-lit before him: a
+subtle influence of quietude steals down upon him from the stars. "What
+nothings we are," he murmurs, "before the least of these stars!" One in
+particular--is it Sirius?--entrances his attention with its cold
+refulgence of pure light. His thoughts involuntarily shape themselves in
+rhythm and rhyme;
+
+  Sun of the sleepless! melancholy star!
+  Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far,
+  That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel,
+  How like art thou to joy remember'd well!
+  So gleams the past, the light of other days,
+  Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;
+  A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
+  Distinct, but distant--clear--but oh! how cold!
+
+It is the hour when Byron's brain becomes thronged with a glowing
+phantasmagoria of ideas that cry aloud for visible expression. He
+forgets, under the stress of creative impulse, the sources and causes of
+his inherent melancholy,--the miserable days of his childhood, with a
+Fury for a mother,--the wound, never to be healed, of his unrequited
+love for Mary Chaworth,--the inimical wife from whom he is eternally
+alienated,--the little daughter that he may never hold in his arms,--the
+beloved sister separated from his side,--the ancestral home of his
+forefathers now passed into a stranger's hold,--the meteoric glory and
+total eclipse of his unparalleled popularity in England,--the follies,
+and worse than follies, which have made him what he is, "consistent in
+nothing but his passion and his pride." These memories, like poisonous
+exhalations, are banished from his mind, and leave a clear horizon for a
+while,--a fertile landscape peopled with great words and images.
+Something akin to inspiration seizes upon him: and he throws himself to
+work with all the zest and nerve of his impulsive nature.
+
+This is a man who writes, in his own phrase, "with rapidity and rarely
+with pains.... When I once take pen in hand, I _must_ say what comes
+uppermost or fling it away." Not for him that careful polishing of
+sentences, which other writers meticulously bestow. "I have always
+written as fast as I could put pen to paper, and never revised but in
+the proofs.... I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger; if I
+miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle." And to this
+impetuous directness of onslaught, his finest poems bear witness. Some
+critic has remarked that Byron is too much of the earth earthy to be a
+great lyrical writer: yet a Promethean fire, stolen from heaven, burns
+immortally through some of his shorter lyrics. In Greek, it is said,
+there are 1632 ways of expressing the simple fact _I love you_: yet who
+has ever put it in a more convincing form than Byron does in _Maid of
+Athens_?
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  MAID OF ATHENS.
+
+  By those tresses unconfined,
+  Woo'd by each AEgean wind;
+  By those lids whose jetty fringe
+  Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
+  By those wild eyes like the roe,
+  _Zoee mou, sas agapo_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Maid of Athens, ere we part,
+  Give, oh give me back my heart!
+  Or, since that has left my breast,
+  Keep it now, and take the rest!
+  Hear my vow before I go.
+  _Zoee mou, sas agapo._
+  (My life, I love you!)
+
+  By those tresses unconfined,
+  Woo'd by each AEgean wind;
+  By those lids whose jetty fringe
+  Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
+  By those wild eyes like the roe,
+  _Zoee mou, sas agapo_.
+
+  By that lip I long to taste;
+  By that zone-encircled waist;
+  By all the token-flowers that tell
+  What words can never speak so well;
+  By love's alternate joy and woe,
+  _Zoee mou, sas agapo_.
+
+  Maid of Athens! I am gone:
+  Think of me, sweet! when alone.
+  Though I fly to Istambol,
+  Athens holds my heart and soul:
+  Can I cease to love thee? No!
+  _Zoee mou, sas agapo._
+
+Rapidly as his pen flies over the paper, the torrent of throbbing
+thought flows faster still. Far on into the night, when ghostly noises
+echo through the sleeping palace, "that ever-gushing and perennial fount
+of natural waters," as Scott has described the genius of Byron, pours
+forth in reckless profusion. Until at last, outspent with energy, he
+draws a deep breath of exhaustion, and realizes that he is weariness
+itself. The moon has sunk in Arno: the stars are half-way across the
+sky: a cold glimmer of dawn is palpitating along the East, as Byron--
+
+  "Again to that accustom'd couch must creep
+  Where joy subsides, and sorrow sighs to sleep."
+
+After day's fitful fever he sleeps well: and rest, a few short hours of
+it, is due to that perturbed spirit, which now,
+
+  ... O'erlabour'd with his being's strife,
+  Shrinks to that sweet forgetfulness of life ...
+  That sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least.
+                                               (_Lara._)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ _Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., Ltd._,
+ _Bradford and London._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Day with Lord Byron, by May Clarissa Gillington
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