405 To find our hearthstone turn'd into a tomb,
And round its once warm precincts palely lying
The ashes of our hopes, is a deep grief,
Beyond a single gentleman's belief.
5 5 2
He enter'd in the house?his home no more,
410 For without hearts there is no home;?and felt
The solitude of passing his own door Without a welcome; there he long had dwelt,
There his few peaceful days Time had swept o'er,
There his worn bosom and keen eye would melt
415 Over the innocence of that sweet child,
His only shrine of feelings undefiled. 53
He was a man of a strange temperament,
Of mild demeanour though of savage mood,
Moderate in all his habits, and content
420 With temperance in pleasure, as in food,
Quick to perceive, and strong to bear, and meant
For something better, if not wholly good;
His country's wrongs9 and his despair to save her
Had stung him from a slave to an enslaver.
a # #
96
But let me to my story: I must own,
If I have any fault, it is digression;
Leaving my people to proceed alone,
860 While I soliloquize beyond expression; But these are my addresses from the throne,1
Which put off business to the ensuing session:
Forgetting each omission is a loss to
The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.2
9. Referring to the Greek nation's subjugation by 2. Byron warmly admired this poet, author of the Ottoman Empire. Orlando Furioso (1 532), the greatest of the Italian
1. The speeches with which the British monarch chivalric romances. opens sessions of Parliament.
.
724 / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
97
865 I know that what our neighbours call 'longueurs, '3 (We've not so good a word, but have the thing
In that complete perfection which ensures
An epic from Bob Southey4 every spring?)
Form not the true temptation which allures
870 The reader; but 'twould not be hard to bring
Some fine examples of the epopee,5
To prove its grand ingredient is ennui.
98
We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps;6
We feel without him: Wordsworth sometimes wakes,
875 To show with what complacency he creeps,
With his dear 'Waggoners,'7 around his lakes;
He wishes for 'a boat' to sail the deeps?
Of ocean??No, of air; and then he makes
Another outcry for 'a little boat,'
