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.

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.

If iny 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,
The fault was mine ; nor do I seck to screen
My errors with defensive parados;

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

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.

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'u
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away :
Something — I know not what does still uphold

A spirit of slight patience ; — not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

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.

I feel almost at times as I have felt
In happy childhood ; trees, and flowers, and brooks
Which do remember me of where I dwelt
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition of their looks ;

And even at moments I could think I see
Some living thing to love -- but none like thee.

Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
A fund for contemplation ; – to admire
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
But something worthier do such scenes inspire :
Here to be lonely is not desolate,
For much I view which I could most desire,

And, above all, a lake I can behold
Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

Oh that thou wert but with me!- but I grow
The fool of my own wishes, and forget
The solitude which I have vaunted so
Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
There may be others which I less may show;
I ain not of the plaintive mood, and yet

I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.

I did remind thee of our own dear Lake, ?
By the old Hall which may be mine no more.
Leman's is fair ; but think not I forsake
The si et remembrance of a dearer shore :
Sad havoc 'Time must with my memory make,
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before ;

Though, like all things which I have loved, they are Resign'd for ever, or divided far.

The world is all before me; I but ask
Of Nature that with which she will comply -
It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask,
And never gaze on it with apathy.

She was my early friend, and now shall be
My sister - till I look again on thee.

I can reduce all feclings but this one ;
And that I would not; - for at length I see
Such scenes as those wherein my life begun.
The earliest-even the only paths for mc —
Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be ;

The passions which have torn me would have slept; I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept.

With false Ambition what had I to do?
Little with Love, and least of all with Fame;
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make a namc.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue ;
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.

But all is over - I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.

And for the future, this world's future.may
From me demand but little of my care;
I have outlived myself by mamy a day;
Having survived so many things that were ;

sent home at the time for publication, in case Mrs. Leigh shoul.l sanction it." There is," he says, “amongst the manuscripts an Epistle to my Sister, on which I should wish her opinion to be consulted before publication ; if she objects, of course omit it.” On the 5th 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, 1

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 an ior Italy.” 'l'he Epistle was first given to the world in 1830.]

1 (Admiral Byron was remarkable for nerer making a voyage without a tempest. lleras known to the sailors by the lacetious 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 circumnavigated the world, many years after, as coinmander of a similar expedition.)

2 The Lake of Newstead Abbey. (Thus described in Don Juan:“ Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its soitend way did take

In currents through the calmer water spread
Around: the wild fowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed;
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stooil
With their green faces fix'd upon the lood." ]

My years have been no slumber, but the prcy Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share

Of life which might have fill'd a century,
Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by.

And for the remnant which may be to come
I am content; and for the past I feel
Not thankless, for within the crowded sum
Of struggles, happiness at times would stcal,
And for the present, I would not benumb
My feelings farther. – Nor shall I conccal

That with all this I still can look around,
And worship Nature with a thought profound.

For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart
I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
We were and are — I am, even as thou art-
Beings who ne'er cach other can resign;
It is the same, together or apart,
Froin life's commencement to its slow decline

We are entwined lct death come slow or fast, The tie which bound the first endures the last !

Thy nights are banish'd from the realms of sleep!

Yes ! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel

A hollow agony which will not heal,
For thou art pillow'd on a curse too deep;
Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap

The bitter harvest in a woe as real !
I have had many foes, but none like thee;

For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,

And be avenged, or turn them into friend; But thou in safe implacability Hadst nought to dread – in thy own weakness

shielded, And in my love, which hath but too much yielded.

And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare — And thus upon the world — trust in thy truthAnd the wild fame of my ungovern'd youth

On things that were not, and on things that are Even upon such a basis hast thou built A monument, whose cement bath been guilt! The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord, And hew'd down, with an unsuspected sword, Fame, peace, and hope — and all the better life

Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart, Might still have risen from out the grave of strife, And found a nobler duty than to part. But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,

Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,

For present anger, and for future gold -
And buying other's grief at any price.
And thus once enter'd into crooked ways,
The early truth, which was thy proper praise,
Did not still walk beside thee — but at times,
And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
Deceit, averments inco patible
Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell

In Janus-spirits — the significant eye
Which learns to lie with silence - the pretext
Of Prudence, with advantages annex'd -
The acquiescence in all things which tend,
No matter how, to the desired end

All found a place in thy philosoply.
The means were worthy, and the end is won
I would not do by thee as thou hast done ! 2

September, 1516.

LINES OX HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS 11.1.1 And thou wert sad — yet I was not with thee !

And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near; Jethought that joy and health alone could be

Where I was not — and pain and sorrow here. And is it thus ? – it is as I foretold,

And shall be more so; for the mind recoils Upon itself, and the wreck'd heart lies cold,

While heaviness collects the shatter'd spoils. It is not in the storm nor in the strife

We feel benumb'd, and wish to be no more,

But in the after-silence on the shore, When all is lost, except a little life. I am too well avenged !- but 't was my right;

Whate'er my sins might be, thou wert not sent To be the Nemesis who should requite

Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument. Mercy is for the mercifu!!— if thou Hast been of such, 't will be accorded now.

! [These rerses were written immediately after the failure of the negotiation for a reconciliation before Lord Buron lett Switzerland for Itals, but were not intended for the public ere: as, however, they have recently found their way into circulation, we include them in this collection.)

(" Lord Byron had at least this much to say for himself, that he was not the first to inake his domestic differences a topic of public discussion. On the contrars, he saw himseli, ere any fact but the one undisguised and tangible one was, or could be known, held up every where, and by every art of malice, as the most infamous of men, - because he had parte 1 from his wife. He was exquisitively sensitive: he was wounded at once by a thousand arrows; and all this with the most perfect and indignant knowledge, that of all who were assailing him not one knew any thing of the real merits of the case. Did he right, then, in publishinz those squibs and tirades ? No. certainly: it would hare been nobler, better, viser far, to have utterly scorned the assaults of such encmics, and taken no notice, of any kind, of them. But, be. cause this young, bot-blooded, proud, patrician poet did not, amidst the exacerbation of feelings which he could not control, act in precisely the most dignified and wisest of all possible manners of action, - are we entitled, is the world at largc entitled, to issue a broad sentence of vituperative condemnation ? Do we know all that he had sutlered? hare we imagination enough to comprehend what he suffered, under circumstances such as these? - hare te been tried in similar circumstances, thether we could feel the wound unAuchingly, and keep the weapon quiescent in the hand that trembled with all the excitements of insulted privacr. honour, and fich ? Let reante consider for a moment what it is that they demand when they insist upon a poet of Byron's class

abstaining altogether from expressing in his works any thing of his own feelings in regard to any thing that immediately concerns his own history. We tell him in every possible form and shape, that the great and distinguishing merit of his poetry is the intense truth with which the poetry

expresses his own personal feelings. We encourage him in every possible way to dissect his own heart for our entertainment tre tempe him by erery bribe most likely to act powerfully on a young and imaginative man, to plunge into the darkest depths of self-knowledge; to madden his brain with eternal self-scrutinies, to find his pride and his pleasure in what others shrink from as torture - we tempt him to indulge in these dangerous exercises, until they obviously acquire the power of leading him to the very brink of frenzy - we tempt him to find, and to see in this perilous vocation, the staple of his existence, the food of his ambition, the very essence of his glory, - and the moment that, by habits of our own creating, at least of our own encouraging and confirming, he is carried one single step beyond what we happen to approve of, we turn round with all the bitterness of spleen, and reproach him with the unmanliness or entertaining the public with his feelings in regard to his separation from his wise. This was truly the conduct of a fair and liberal public! To our view of the matter, Lord Byron, treated as he had been, tempted as he had been, and tortured and insulted as he was at the moment, did no more forfeit his character by writing what he did write upon that unhappy occasion, than another man, under circuinstances of the same nature, would have done, by telling something of his mind about it to an intimate friend across the tire. The public had forced him into the habits of familiarity, and they received his confidence with nothing but anger and scorn." - LOCKHART.)

WHEN the last sunshine of expiring day
In summer's twilight weeps itself away,
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower ?
With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes
While Nature makes that melancholy pause,
Her breathing moment on the bridge where Time
Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime,
Who hath not shared that calm so still and deep,
The voiceless thought which would not speak bui weep,
A holy concord - and a bright regret,
A glorious sympathy with suns that set ?
T is not harsh sorrow — but a tenderer woe,
Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below,
Felt without bitterness - but full and clear,
A sweet dejection -a transparent tear,
Unmix'd with worldly grief or selfish stain,
Shed without shame - and secret without pain.

Even as the tenderness that hour instils When Summer's day declines along the hills, So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes, When all of Genius which can perish dics. A mighty Spirit is eclipsed — a Power Hath pass'd from day to darkness — to whose hour Oi light no likeness is bequeath'u — no name, Focus at once of all the rays of Fame ! The flash of Wit - the bright Intelligence, The beam of Song - the blaze of Eloquence, Set with their Sun - but still have left behind The enduring produce of immortal Mind; Fruits of a genial morn, and glorious noon, A deathless part of him who died too soon.

1 (Mr. Sheridan died the 7th of July, 1816, and this monody was written at Diodati on the 17th, at the request of Bir. Douglas Kinnaird. “I did as well as I could," says Lord Byron, " but where I have not my choice, I pretend to answer for nothing." A proof-sheet of the poem, with the words " by request of a friend" in the titlepage, having reached hím, -" I request you," he says, “ to expinge that samne, unless you please to add, by a person of quality,' or

of wit and humour.' It is sad trash, and must have been done to make it ridiculous.")

* (Sheridan's own monody on Garrick was spoken from the same boards, by Mrs. Yates, in March, 1779. " One day," says Lord Byron, " I saw him take it up. He lighted upon the dedication to the Dowager Lady Spencer. On seeing it, he few into a rage and exclaiined, that it must be a forgery, as he had never dedicated any thing of his to such a dcanting,' &c. &c. and so he went on for half an hour abusing his own dedication, or at least the object of it. If all writers were equally sincere, it would be ludicrous." Byron Diary, 1821. )

3 (See Fox, Burke, and Pitt's eulogy on Mr. Sheridan's speech on the charges exhibited against Mr. llastings in the House of Commons. Mr. Pitt entreated the House to adjourn, to give time for a caliner consideration of the question than could then occur after the immediate effect of that oration. ** Before my departure from England," says Gibbon, “ I was present at the august spectacle of Mr. Hastings's trial in West. miaster llall. It is not my province to absolve or condemn the governor of India ; but Mr. Sheridan's eloquence demanded my applause ; nor could I hear without cmotion the personal conpliment which he paid me in the presence of the British nation. This display of genius blazed four successive us, &c. On being asked by a brother Whig, at the conciusion of the speech, how he came to compliment

But small that portion of the wondrous whole,
These sparkling segments of that circling soul,
Which all embraced -- and lightend over all,
To cheer - to pierce - to please — or to appal.
From the charm'd council to the festive board,
Of human feelings the unbounded lord ;
In whose acclaim the loftiest voices vied, (pride.
The praised — the proud — who made his praise their
When the loud cry of trampled Hindostan 3
Arose to Heaven in her appeal from man,
His was the thunder - his the avenging rod,
The wrath — the delegated voice of God!
Which shook the nations through his lips - and blazed
Till vanquish'd senates trembled as they praised. :

And here, oh! here, where yet all young and warm,
The gay creations of his spirit charm,
The matchless dialogue - the deathless wit,
Which knew not what it was to intermit;
The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring
Home to our hearts the truth froin which they spring;
These wondrous beings of his Fancy, wrought
To fulness by the fiat of his thought,
Here in their first abode you still may meet,
Bright with the hues of his Promethean heat;
A halo of the light of other days,
Which still the splendour of its orb betrays.

But should there be to whoin the fatal blight Of failing Wisdom yields a base delight, Men who exult when minds of heavenly tone Jar in the music which was born their own, Still let them pause — ah! little do they know That what to them seem'd Vice might be but Woe. 5 Gibbon with the epithet " luminous," Sheridan answered, in a half whisper, “ I said ' voluminous.'")

4 (" I heard Sheridan only once, and that briefly; but I liked his voice, his manner, and his wit. He is the only one of them I ever wished to hear at greater length." Byron Diary, 1821.)

$("Once I saw Sheridan cry, after a splendid dinner. I had the honour of sitting next him. The occasion of his tears was soine observation or other upon the sulject of the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting otlice and keeping to their principles. Sheridan turned round:-* Sir, it is easy for my Lord G. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H., with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either presently derived or inherited in sinecure or acquisitions from the public money, to boast of their patriotism and keep aloon' from temptation : but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless knew not in the course of their lives what it was to have a shilling of their own.' And in saying this he wept. I have more than once heard him say, 'that he never had a shilling of his own.' To be sure, he contrived to extract a good many of other people's. In 1815, I found him at my lawyer's. After mutual greetings, he retired. Before recurring to my own business, I could not help inquiring that of Sheridan. Oh,' replied the attorney, 'the usual thing! to stave off an action.'

Well,' said I, and what do you mean to do?'--'Nothing at all for the present,' said he would you have us proceed against old Sherry? what would be the use of it?' and here he began laughing, and going over Sheridan's good gifts of conversation. Such was Sheridan ! he could soften an attor. pey! There has been nothing like it since the days of Orphcus."- Byron Diary, 1821.)