5 It hath no power upon the past, and for The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness, It is not of my search.?My mother Earth! And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains, Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.
10 And thou, the bright eye of the universe, That openest over all, and unto all Art a delight?thou shin'st not on my heart. And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
15 Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs In dizziness of distance; when a leap, A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed To rest for ever?wherefore do I pause?
20 I feel the impulse?yet I do not plunge; I see the peril?yet do not recede; And my brain reels?and yet my foot is firm: There is a power upon me which withholds And makes it my fatality to live;
25 If it be life to wear within myself This barrenness of spirit, and to be My own soul's sepulchre, for I have ceased To justify my deeds unto myself? The last infirmity of evil.4 Ay,
30 Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, [An eagle passes.] Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, Well may'st thou swoop so near me?I should be Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine
35 Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision.?Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself; But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
40 Half dust, half deity, alike unfit To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make A conflict of its elements, and breathe The breath of degradation and of pride, Contending with low wants and lofty will
45 Till our mortality predominates, And men are?what they name not to themselves, And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,
[The Shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard.]
The natural music of the mountain reed?
4. An echo of Milton's 'Lycidas,' where fame is identified as 'That last infirmity of a noble mind' (line 71).
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64 4 / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
For here the patriarchal days5 are not
50 A pastoral fable?pipes in the liberal0 air, free-moving Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd; My soul would drink those echoes.?Oh, that I were The viewless0 spirit of a lovely sound, invisible A living voice, a breathing harmony,
55 A bodiless enjoyment?born and dying With the blest tone which made me!
Enter from, below a CHAMOIS6 HUNTER,
CHAMOIS HUNTER Even so This way the chamois leapt: her nimble feet Have baffled me; my gains to-day will scarce Repay my break-neck travail.?What is here?
60 Who seems not of my trade, and yet hath reach'd A height which none even of our mountaineers, Save our best hunters, may attain: his garb Is goodly, his mien? manly, and his air appearance Proud as a free-born peasant's, at this distance.? I will approach him nearer.
65 MANFRED [not perceiving the other] To be thus? Gray-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines, Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless, A blighted trunk upon a cursed root, Which but supplies a feeling to decay?
-0 And to be thus, eternally but thus, Having been otherwise! Now furrow'd o'er With wrinkles, plough'd by moments, not by years; And hours?all tortured into ages?hours Which I outlive!?Ye toppling crags of ice!
75 Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me? I hear ye momently above, beneath, Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass, And only fall on things which still would live;
so On the young flourishing forest, or the hut And hamlet of the harmless villager.
CHAMOIS HUNTER The mists begin to rise from up the valley; I'll warn him to descend, or he may chance To lose at once his way and life together.
85 MANFRED The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell, Whose every wave breaks on a living shore, Heaped with the damn'd like pebbles.?I am giddy.
90 CHAMOIS HUNTER I must approach him cautiously; if near, A sudden step will startle him, and he Seems tottering already.
MANFRED Mountains have fallen,
5. The days of the Old Testament partriarchs, who 6. A goatlike antelope found in the European were shepherds. mountains.
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IMANFRED, ACT 2 / 64 5
Leaving a gap in the clouds, and with the shock Rocking their Alpine brethren; filling up
95 The ripe green valleys with destruction's splinters; Damming the rivers with a sudden dash, Which crush'd the waters into mist, and made Their fountains find another channel?thus, Thus, in its old age, did Mount Rosenberg7? Why stood I not beneath it?
IOO CHAMOIS HUNTER Friend! have a care, Your next step may be fatal!?for the love Of him who made you, stand not on that brink!
MANFRED [not hearing him] Such would have been for me a fitting tomb; My bones had then been quiet in
