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.1

I.

THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined, 2
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;

1 [These beautiful verses, so expressive of the writer's wounded feelings at the moment, were written in July, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva, and transmitted to England for publication, with some other pieces. "Be careful," he says, "in printing the stanzas beginning, Though the day of my destiny 's,' &c. which I think well of as a composition."]

"Though the days of my glory are over,
And the sun of my fame hath declined."]

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

IV.

not of them.” 1

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 me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,

Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie. 2

V.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one —

[Originally thus:

"There is many a pang to pursue me,

And many a peril to stem;

They may torture, but shall not subdue me;

They may crush, but they shall not contemn."]

2 [MS. "Though watchful, 't was but to reclaim me, Nor, silent, to sanction a lie."]

If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
'T was 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 still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

July 24. 1816.

EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA. 1

I.

My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:

[These stanzas "Than which," says the Quarterly Review, for January 1831, "there is nothing perhaps more mournfully and desolately beautiful in the whole range of Lord Byron's poetry "- were also written at Diodati, and sent boine at the time for publication, in case Mrs. Leigh should sanction it. "There is," he says, " amongst the manuscripts an epistle to my Sister, on which I should wish

Go where I will, to me thou art the same-
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,

A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

II.

The first were nothing- had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;

But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;

Reversed for him our grandsire's 1 fate of yore, —
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

III.

If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,

I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,

her opinion to be consulted before publication; if she objects, of course omit it." On the fifth of October he writes," My sister has decided on the omission of the lines. Upon this point, her option will be followed. As I have no copy of them, I request that you will preserve one for me in MS.; for I never can remember a line of that nor any other composition of mine. God help me! if I proceed in this scribbling, I shall have frittered away my mind before I am thirty; but poetry is at times a real relief to me. To-morrow I am for Italy.' The epistle was first given to the world in 1830.1

[Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of "Foul-weather Jack."

"But, though it were tempest-toss'd,
Still his bark could not be lost."

He returned safely from the wreck of the Wager (in Anson's voyage), and subsequently circumnavigated the world, many years after, as commander of a similar expedition.]

The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.

IV.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
The gift,
- a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay :
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

V.

Kingdoms and empires in my little day I have outlived, and yet I am not old; And when I look on this, the petty spray Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away: Something does still uphold A spirit of slight patience; - not in vain, Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

I know not what

VI.

Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
Within me or perhaps a cold despair,
Brought on when ills habitually recur,
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air,

(For even to this may change of soul refer,
And with light armour we may learn to bear,)
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
The chief companion of a calmer lot.