GEORGE GORDON BYRON
(1788–1824)
When Byron’s eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder’s roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch’d the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
MATTHEW ARNOLD: Memorial Verses (1850)
The son of an admiral and his second wife, a Scottish noblewoman, Byron grew up in Aberdeen. His childhood was unhappy and he suffered from a ‘diabolical’ mother and a vicious nurse. His club foot strengthened his resolve to excel at physical activities, and he was by all accounts a prodigious swimmer. In 1788, on the death of his great uncle, Byron inherited his title and the family estate at Newstead Abbey. He was educated at Harrow, where, aged fifteen, he fell passionately in love with Mary Chaworth (see ‘To a lady’), the first of his erotic liaisons. From Harrow he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1807 Hours of Idleness was published. It was in Cambridge that he experienced the most intense of his homosexual relationships – with the fifteen-year-old chorister John Edleston, whose death was to trigger the series of elegies known as the ‘Thyrza’ cycle, six of which were added to the first and second editions of Childe Harold.
From 1809 to 1811 Byron undertook a Mediterranean grand tour. His private life resembled, if not quite rivalled, that of Casanova. He married Annabella Milbanke in 1815 but left her after a year. He then shocked the public by his relationship with his half-sister, Augusta, who became his constant companion. Having left England in 1816, he sailed up the Rhine to Switzerland, where he joined Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley. In January 1817 Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister, bore Byron a daughter. He agreed to support mother and daughter (Allegra) but left them later in the year when the Shelleys returned to England. He then embarked on a number of relationships before settling down for a time with Teresa Guiccioli in Italy, who left her husband for Byron in 1821. Together they became involved with the Carbonari, a militant nationalist movement that Byron supported financially. When the Carbonari’s struggle foundered, Byron embraced another cause – that of Greek liberation from Turkish oppression. He set sail from Leghorn in the Hercules, which he had armed at his own expense, and arrived ten days later in Cephalonia. He was joined in January 1824 by the Greek leader Alexander Mavrocordato, whose plan was to attack the Turkish stronghold at Lepanto. In April 1824 Byron caught a severe chill, which led to rheumatic fever from which he died on 19 April 1824. Memorial services were held throughout Greece, where his heart and lungs were buried, but his body was returned to England. When the Deans of St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey refused to bury the poet, his friend Hobhouse arranged for the body to lie in state for a few days in London. He was finally interred in the family vault in the church of Hucknall Torkard, near Newstead Abbey.
Byron’s promiscuity is echoed in his finest work, Don Juan, the first two cantos of which were published by John Murray in 1819 (‘Almost all Don Juan is real life – either my own – or from people I know’). In this extraordinary work, full of irony, self-mockery, cynicism, exuberance, sarcasm, the hero is continually seduced by the women he encounters. Byron’s letters, edited in thirteen volumes by Leslie A. Marchand and published by John Murray, provide a fascinating commentary on the times in which he lived.
Arnold’s lines, quoted above, give some idea of Byron’s contribution to English literature. He gave poetic shape to the new feelings of Romanticism in a way that the public could understand. With the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812) Byron became a celebrity overnight, and his fame was consolidated with the success of The Giaour (1813), The Bride of Abydos (1813) and The Corsair (1814). The heroic and melancholy nature of many of his characters, and the manner of his own death while fighting for the liberation of Greece, endeared him to the Romantic generation of painters and composers. Gooch and Thatcher (1982) list 1,287 musical works based on Byron’s poems. Pushkin imitated the Byronic hero in Eugene Onegin, and there were many composers who were inspired by his poems. Byron-based operas include Donizetti’s Parisina (1833) and Marino Faliero (1835), and Verdi’s I due Foscari (1844) and Il Corsaro (1848). Berlioz, a great admirer, turned to Byron for Le Corsaire and Harold en Italie; Manfred influenced Schumann and Nietzsche (the Manfred-Meditation for piano); and Liszt based his Tasso on The Lament of Tasso. Byron’s poems have also proved popular with song composers, especially Issac Nathan (30 settings), Loewe (24), Schumann (6), Busoni (3), Mendelssohn (2), and Mussorgsky, Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov (1 each).
It was Byron’s Hebrew Melodies that attracted composers most. The eighteenth century’s taste for the ancient and national yielded a number of musical volumes that featured the poems of Byron, Moore and Scott, set to music by the likes of Haydn, Hummel, Weber and Beethoven. George Thomson’s Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs was published in 1793 – a work that was rivalled by James Power’s First Number of A Selection of Irish Melodies in 1808, which joined the poems of Thomas Moore to the accompaniments of Sir John Stevenson. Power’s next publication, A Selection of Scottish Melodies, dates from 1812, and was set to music by Henry Bishop. Thomson responded with his Select Collection of Original Irish Airs (1814), for which he tried to enlist the services of Byron – without success. Power, in the face of competition from Thomson, now published the First Number of Moore’s Sacred Songs in 1816 (the Second Number followed in 1824). The First Number of Moore’s National Airs appeared in 1818 and by 1827 had run to six parts.
Such, then, was the background that prepared the way for the success of Isaac Nathan. He first wrote to Byron on 13 June 1814, and received no reply. On 30 June he tried again:
I have with great trouble selected a considerable number of very beautiful Hebrew melodies of undoubted antiquity, some of which are proved to have been sung by the Hebrews before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. […] I am most anxious that the Poetry for them should be written by the first Poet of the present age, and though I feel and know I am taking a great liberty with your Lordship in even hinting that one or two songs written by you would give the work great celebrity, yet I trust your Lordship will pardon and attribute it to what is really the case, the sincere admiration I feel for your extraordinary talents. It would have been my most sanguine wish from the first to have applied to your Lordship had I not been prevented by a knowledge that you wrote only for amusement and the fame you so justly acquired. I therefore wrote to Walter Scott offering him a share in the publication if he would undertake to write for me, which he declined, not thinking himself adequate to the task, the distance likewise being too great between us, I could not wait on him owing to my professional engagements in London.
Byron, unlike Scott, accepted Nathan’s offer, and the poet’s excitement is apparent in the postscript of a letter he wrote to Annabella on 20 October 1814:
Oh, I must tell you of one of my present avocations. Kinnaird (a friend of mine, brother to Lord Kd.) applied to me to write words for a musical composer who is going to publish the real old undisputed Hebrew melodies, which are beautiful & to which David & the prophets actually sang the ‘songs of Zion’ – & I have done nine or ten on the sacred model – partly from Job &c. & partly my own imagination […]. It is odd enough that this should fall to my lot, who have been abused as ‘an infidel’. Augusta says ‘they will call me a Jew next’.
Byron heard Nathan recite his airs and joked to Thomas Moore about the composer’s ‘vile Ebrew nasalities’. He became, however, clearly attracted to Nathan as a person – partly perhaps as a result of his sympathy for victim nations, and also because of his sense of being an outcast himself. The First Number of A Selection of Hebrew Melodies was published in April 1815 and comprised twelve poems: ‘She walks in beauty’, ‘The harp the monarch minstrel swept’, ‘If that high world’, ‘The wild gazelle’, ‘Oh! weep for those’, ‘On Jordan’s banks’, ‘Jephtha’s daughter’, ‘Oh! snatched away in beauty’s bloom’, ‘My soul is dark’, ‘I saw thee weep’, ‘Thy days are done’ and ‘It is the hour’. The success of these songs was such that John Murray then published, a mere month after the First Number of A Selection of Hebrew Melodies, a demi-octavo volume that bore the title: Hebrew Melodies. This publication contained twenty-five poems without the music, twelve from Nathan’s First Number, and thirteen new poems. Nathan then published his Second Number of A Selection of Hebrew Melodies in April 1816. The twelve new Hebrew Melodies were: ‘Song of Saul before his last battle’, ‘By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept’, ‘Vision of Belshazzar’, ‘Herod’s lament for Mariamne’, ‘Were my bosom as false as thou deem’st it to be’, ‘The destruction of Semnacherib’, ‘Saul’, ‘When coldness wraps this suffering clay’, ‘All is Vanity, saith the preacher’, ‘On the day of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus’, ‘Francisca’ and ‘Sun of the sleepless!’
Byron left England for good eight days after the publication of Nathan’s Second Number, and had nothing more to do with the Hebrew Melodies. Nathan’s two publications proved to be a huge success, and according to Olga S. Phillips in Isaac Nathan, Friend of Byron, sold 10,000 copies, 4,000 more than Murray’s edition of the Hebrew Melodies.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: from Volkslieder, Op. 108/12 (1816)1
To a lady
[Oh! had my fate been join’d with thine]
Oh! had my fate been join’d with thine,
As once this pledge appear’d a token2,
These follies had not then been mine,
For then my peace had not been broken.
To thee these early faults I owe,
To thee, the wise and old reproving:
They know my sins, but do not know
For once my soul, like thine, was pure,
And all its rising fires could smother;
But now thy vows no more endure,
Bestow’d by thee upon another;
Perhaps his peace I could destroy,
And spoil the blisses that await him;
Yet let my rival smile in joy,
For thy dear sake I cannot hate him.
Ah! since thy angel form is gone,
My heart no more can rest with any;
But what it sought in thee alone,
Attempts, alas! to find in many.
Then fare thee well, deceitful maid!
’Twere vain and fruitless to regret thee;
Nor hope nor memory yield their aid,
But pride may teach me to forget thee.
[Yet all this giddy waste of years,
This tiresome round of palling pleasures;
These varied loves, these matrons’ fears,
These thoughtless strains to passion’s measures –
If thou wert mine, had all been hush’d: –
This cheek, now pale from early riot,
With passion’s hectic ne’er had flushed,
But bloom’d in calm domestic quiet.
Yes, once the rural scene was sweet,
For nature seem’d to smile before thee;
And once my breast abhorr’d deceit, –
For then it beat but to adore thee.
But now I seek for other joys:
To think would drive my soul to madness;
In thoughtless throngs and empty noise
Yet, even in these a thought will steal
In spite of every vain endeavour, –
And, fiends might pity what I feel, –
To know that thou art lost for ever.]
On parting
[The kiss, dear maid!] (1816)1
I
The kiss, dear maid! thy lip has left
Shall never part from mine,
Till happier hours restore the gift
Untainted back to thine.
II
Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,
An equal love may see:
The tear that from thine eyelid streams
Can weep no change in me.
III
I ask no pledge to make me blest
In gazing when alone;
Nor one memorial for a breast,
Whose thoughts are all thine own.
IV
Nor need I write – to tell the tale
My pen were doubly weak:
Oh! what can idle words avail,
Unless the heart could speak?
V
By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,
Must bear the love it cannot show,
And silent ache for thee.
(Bishop, Nathan)
HUGO WOLF
Sun of the sleepless!
[translated as ‘Sonne der Schlummerlosen’ by Otto Gildemeister] (1896)1
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 remembered 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!
(Karg-Elert, Loewe, Mendelssohn, Nathan, Nietzsche, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rorem, Schumann)
HENRY BISHOP
To Thomas Moore (1818)1
I
My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,
Here’s a double health to thee!
II
Here’s a sigh to those who love me,
And a smile to those who hate;
And, whatever sky’s above me,
Here’s a heart for every fate.
III
Though the ocean roar around me,
Yet it still shall bear me on;
Though a desert should surround me,
It hath springs that may be won.
IV
Were’t the last drop in the well,
As I gasp’d upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,
’Tis to thee that I would drink.
V
With that water, as this wine,
The libation I would pour
Would be – peace with thine and mine,
And a health to thee, Tom Moore.
(Gideon)
ROBERT SCHUMANN: from Sechs frühe Lieder
I saw thee weep
[translated as ‘Die Weinende’ by Julius Körner] (1827/1933)1
I
I saw thee weep – the big bright tear
Came o’er that eye of blue2;
And then methought it did appear
A violet dropping dew;
I saw thee smile – the sapphire’s blaze
Beside thee ceased to shine;
It could not match the living rays
That fill’d that glance of thine.
II
[As clouds from yonder sun receive
A deep and mellow dye,
Which scarce the shade of coming eve
Can banish from the sky,
Those smiles unto the moodiest mind
Their own pure joy impart;
Their sunshine leaves a glow behind
That lightens o’er the heart.]
(Busoni, Hummel, Loewe, Nathan)
ROBERT SCHUMANN: from Myrthen, Op. 25 (1840/1840)
My soul is dark1
[translated as ‘Aus den “Hebräischen Gesängen” ’ by Julius Körner]
I
My soul is dark – Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o’er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
’Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.
II
But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence long;
And now ’tis doom’d to know the worst,
And break at once – or yield to song.2
(Balakirev, Loewe, Nathan, Nielsen, Rubinstein)
CHARLES GOUNOD
Maid of Athens (1872/1872)1
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,
.2
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,
.
By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell3
What words can never speak so well;
By love’s alternate joy and woe,
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!
.
(Balfe, Lassen, Nathan)
MAUDE VALÉRIE WHITE
So, we’ll go no more a roving (1888)1
So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
(van Dieren, Holloway, Maconchy)
HUBERT PARRY: from English Lyrics IV (1896)
Stanzas for music [There be none of Beauty’s daughters]1
There be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming
And the lull’d winds seem dreaming.
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Foulds, Gibbs, Holbrooke, Holloway, MacCunn, Mendelssohn, Quilter, Stanford, White, Wolf)
When we two parted
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow –
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.1
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me –
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: –
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
[Then fare thee well, Fanny,
Now doubly undone,
To prove false unto many
As fathomless to one.
Even would I recall,
For the woman once falling
Forever must fall.]2
In secret we met –
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Nathan)
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, for reciter, piano and string quartet, Op. 41a (1942/1944); later arranged for string orchestra, Op. 41b
To-day I have boxed one hour – written an ode to Napoleon Buonaparte – copied it – eaten six biscuits – drunk four bottles of soda water – redde away the rest of my time – besides giving poor *** a world of advice about this mistress of his. (Journal, 10 April 1814.)
The day before, Byron had confided to his Journal the disappointment and outrage he felt at Napoleon’s defeat:
Napoleon Buonaparte has abdicated the throne of the world. ‘Excellent well.’ Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged and resigned in the height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes – the finest instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did well too – Amurath not amis, had he become aught except a dervise – Charles the Fifth but so so – but Napoleon, worst of all. What! wait till they were in his capital, and then talk of his readiness to give up what is already gone!! […] ’Sdeath! – Dionysius at Corinth was yet a king to this. The ‘Isle of Elba’ to retire to! – Well – if it had been Caprea, I should have marvelled less. ‘I see men’s minds are but a parcel of their fortunes.’ [Antony and Cleopatra, Act III, sc. xiii.] I am utterly bewildered and confounded.
Fiona MacCarthy explains in her Introduction to Byron: Life and Legend (John Murray, 2002) Byron’s fascination with Napoleon: ‘The long shadow of Napoleon loomed over Byron’s life, an inspiration and an irritant. Byron, born in 1788, the year before the outbreak of the French Revolution, was conscious of living at an unprecedented period: as he put it, “we live in gigantic and exaggerated times, which make all under Gog and Magog appear pigmean.” [letter to Sir Walter Scott, 4 May 1822] The apparition of Napoleon, almost twenty years his senior, was the spur to Byron’s own ambition, his dissidence, the glamour of his arrogance, the sense of sweeping history that permeates his writing. Napoleon’s flamboyance, his stamina, his dress, his stance, the assiduity with which he preened his image, nurtured Byron’s own creative strain of mockery. As he told his friend Lady Blessington, “with me there is, as Napoleon said, but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous.” ’
Schoenberg, who had emigrated to America in 1933, composed his ‘Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte’ between March and June 1942. Hitler was still in power in Nazi Germany, and Schoenberg almost certainly saw in Byron’s poem an opportunity to express his own hatred of totalitarian dictatorships. By retaining the last stanza, which Byron cut in his final version, Schoenberg was also expressing his gratitude to his adopted country, where he had been living for eight years. The E-flat triads of the ‘Ode’ allude ironically to Beethoven’s E-flat major Third Symphony, the ‘Eroica’ – an appellation that Beethoven withdrew on hearing that Napoleon had assumed the title of Emperor.
I
’Tis done – but yesterday a King!
And arm’d with Kings to strive –
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject – yet alive!
Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew’d our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?
Since he, miscall’d the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.
II
Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind
Who bow’d so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught’st the rest to see.
With might unquestion’d, – power to save, –
Thine only gift hath been the grave
To those that worshipp’d thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition’s less than littleness!
III
Thanks for that lesson – It will teach
To after-warriors more
Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach’d before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,
That led them to adore
Those Pagod1 things of sabre sway
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.
IV
The triumph and the vanity,
The rapture of the strife –
The earthquake voice of Victory,
To thee the breath of life;
The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seem’d made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife –
All quell’d! – Dark Spirit! what must be
The madness of thy memory!
V
The Desolator desolate!
The Victor overthrown!
The Arbiter of others’ fate
A Suppliant for his own!
Is it some yet imperial hope
That with such change can calmly cope?
Or dread of death alone?
To die a prince – or live a slave –
Thy choice is most ignobly brave!
VI
He who of old would rend the oak,2
Dream’d not of the rebound:
Chain’d by the trunk he vainly broke –
Alone – how look’d he round?
Thou, in the sternness of thy strength,
An equal deed hast done at length,
And darker fate hast found:
He fell, the forest prowler’s prey;
But thou must eat thy heart away!
VII
The Roman3, when his burning heart
Was slaked with blood of Rome
Threw down the dagger – dared depart,
In savage grandeur, home –
He dared depart in utter scorn
Of men that such a yoke had borne,
Yet left him such a doom!
His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandon’d power.
VIII
The Spaniard4, when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;
A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well:
Yet better had he neither known
A bigot’s shrine, nor despot’s throne.
IX
But thou – from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung –
Too late thou leav’st the high command
To which thy weakness clung;
All Evil Spirit as thou art,
It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung;
To think that God’s fair world hath been
The footstool of a thing so mean;
X
And Earth hath spilt her blood for him,
Who thus can hoard his own!
And Monarchs bow’d the trembling limb,
And thank’d him for a throne!
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
Oh! ne’er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind!
XI
Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
Nor written thus in vain –
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain:
If thou hast died as honour dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again –
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?
XII
Weigh’d in the balance, hero dust
Is vile as vulgar clay;
Thy scales, Mortality! are just
To all that pass away:
But yet methought the living great
Some higher sparks should animate,
To dazzle and dismay:
Nor deem’d Contempt could thus make mirth
Of these, the Conquerors of the earth.
XIII
And she, proud Austria’s mournful flower5,
Thy still imperial bride;
How bears her breast the torturing hour?
Still clings she to thy side?
Must she too bend, must she too share
Thy late repentance, long despair,
Thou throneless Homicide?
If still she loves thee, hoard that gem, –
’Tis worth thy vanish’d diadem!
XIV
Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle,
And gaze upon the sea;
That element may meet thy smile –
It ne’er was ruled by thee!
Or trace with thine all idle hand
In loitering mood upon the sand
That Earth is now as free!
That Corinth’s pedagogue6 hath now
Transferr’d his by-word to thy brow.
XV
Thou Timour! in his captive’s cage7
What thoughts will there be thine,
While brooding in thy prison’d rage?
But one – ‘The world was mine!’
Unless, like he of Babylon8,
All sense is with thy sceptre gone,
Life will not long confine
That spirit pour’d so widely forth –
So long obey’d – so little worth!
XVI
Or, like the thief of fire from heaven9,
Wilt thou withstand the shock?
And share with him, the unforgiven,
His vulture and his rock!
Foredoom’d by God – by man accurst,
And that last act, though not thy worst,10
The very Fiend’s arch mock;
He in his fall preserved his pride,
And, if a mortal, had as proudly died!
XVII
There was a day – there was an hour,
While earth was Gaul’s – Gaul thine –
When that immeasurable power,
Unsated to resign
Had been an act of purer fame
Than gathers round Marengo’s name,
And gilded thy decline,
Through the long twilight of all time,
Despite some passing clouds of crime.
XVIII
But thou forsooth must be a king,
And don the purple vest,
As if that foolish robe could wring
Remembrance from thy breast.
Where is that faded garment? where
The gewgaws thou wert fond to wear,
The star, the string, the crest?
Vain froward child of empire! say
Are all thy playthings snatched away?
XIX
Where may the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the Great;
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?
Yes – one – the first – the last – the best –
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeath’d the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one!
ARIBERT REIMANN: from Unrevealed. Lord Byron to Augusta Leigh, cantata for baritone and string quartet (1979/1980)
Stanzas to Augusta
[Stanzas to Augusta I]1
I
When all around grew drear and dark,
And reason half withheld her ray –
And hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;
II
In that deep midnight of the mind,
And that internal strife of heart,
When dreading to be deem’d too kind,
The weak despair – the cold depart;
III
When fortune changed – and love fled far,
And hatred’s shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert the solitary star
Which rose and set not to the last.
IV
Oh! blest be thine unbroken light!
That watch’d me as a seraph’s eye,
And stood between me and the night,
For ever shining sweetly nigh.
V
And when the cloud upon us came,
Which strove to blacken o’er thy ray –
Then purer spread its gentle flame,
And dash’d the darkness all away.
VI
Still may thy spirit dwell on mine,
And teach it what to brave or brook –
There’s more in one soft word of thine
Than in the world’s defied rebuke.
VII
Thou stood’st, as stands a lovely tree,
That still unbroke, though gently bent,
Still waves with fond fidelity
Its boughs above a monument.
VIII
The winds might rend – the skies might pour,
But there thou wert – and still wouldst be
Devoted in the stormiest hour
To shed thy weeping leaves o’er me.
IX
But thou and thine shall know no blight,
Whatever fate on me may fall;
For heaven in sunshine will requite
The kind – and thee the most of all.
X
Then let the ties of baffled love
Be broken – thine will never break;
Thy heart can feel – but will not move;
Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.
XI
And these, when all was lost beside,
Were found and still are fix’d in thee; –
And bearing still a breast so tried,
Earth is no desert – ev’n to me.
Stanzas to Augusta
[Stanzas to Augusta II]1
I
Though the day of my destiny’s over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.
II
Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,
Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from thee.
III
Though the rock of my last hope is shiver’d,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver’d
To pain – it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemn;
They may torture, but shall not subdue me;
’Tis of thee that I think – not of them.
IV
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake;
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander’d, thou never couldst shake;
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me2,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, ’twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.
V
Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one;
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
’Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.
VI
From the wreck of the past, which hath perish’d,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish’d
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there is still a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.