475 For there was soft remembrance, and sweet trust In one fond breast,9 to which his own would melt, And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt.
54 And he had learn'd to love,?I know not why, For this in such as him seems strange of mood,?
480 The helpless looks of blooming infancy, Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued, To change like this, a mind so far imbued With scorn of man, it little boots to know; But thus it was; and though in solitude
485 Small power the nipp'd affections have to grow, In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.
55
And there was one soft breast, as hath been said, Which unto his was bound by stronger ties Than the church links withal; and, though unwed,
490 That love was pure, and, far above disguise, Had stood the test of mortal enmities Still undivided, and cemented more By peril, dreaded most in female eyes; But this was firm, and from a foreign shore
495 Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour!
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[SWITZERLAND] 1
68
Lake Leman? woos me with its crystal face, Geneva 645 The mirror where the stars and mountains view
9. Commentators agree that the reference is to story-telling contest in which these five particiByron's half- sister, Augusta Leigh. pated, and which saw the genesis of both
1. Byron with his traveling companion and phy-Frankenstein and Polidori's 'The Vampyre,' took sician, John Polidori, spent the gloomy summer of place that June. The Shelley household's involve
1816 near Geneva, in a villa rented for its proximity ment in Childe Harold is extensive. The fair copy
to the household that Percy Shelley, Mary Woll-of this canto was in fact written out by Claire, and
stonecraft Godwin (who would marry Shelley at Percy would eventually deliver it to Byron's pub-
the end of the year), and her half-sister Claire lisher in London.
Clairmont had set up there. The famous ghost
.
CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE, CANTO 1 / 62 9
650The stillness of their aspect in each trace Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue: There is too much of man here, to look through With a fit mind the might which I behold; But soon in me shall Loneliness renew Thoughts hid, but not less cherish'd than of old, Ere mingling with the herd had penn'd me in their fold. 69 655660To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind; All are not fit with them to stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil In the hot throng, where we become the spoil Of our infection, till too late and long We may deplore and struggle with the coil,0 In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong 'Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong. tumult 70 665There, in a moment, we may plunge our years In fatal penitence, and in the blight Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears, And colour things to come with hues of Night; The race of life becomes a hopeless flight To those that walk in darkness: on the sea, The boldest steer but where their ports invite, But there are wanderers o'er Eternity
670 Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be.
71
Is it not better, then, to be alone, And love Earth only for its earthly sake? By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,2 Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,
675 Which feeds it as a mother who doth make A fair but froward infant her own care, Kissing its cries away as these awake;? Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
Than join the crushing crowd, doom'd to inflict or bear?
72
680 I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me, High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture: I can see Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
685 A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.3
2. River rising in Switzerland and flowing through Ryron to the poetry of Wordsworth and Words- France into the Mediterranean. worth's concepts of nature. Those ideas are
3. During the tour around Lake Geneva that they reflected in canto 3, but the voice is Byron's own. took in late June 1816, Percy Shelley introduced For his comment on being 'half mad' while writing
.
63 0 / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON . ?-?'
73 And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life:
690 I look upon the peopled desart past, As on a place of agony and strife, Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast, To act and suffer, but remount at last With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,
695 Though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast Which it would cope with, on delighted wing, Spurning
