Lord Byron

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (With Byron's Biography)


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his death, the distinctive dress of the cynics.]

      "Reason thus with life:

       If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

       That none but fools would keep."]

      The expunged lines (see var. i.) carried the Lucretian tenets of the preceding stanza to their logical conclusion. The end is silence, not a reunion with superior souls. But Dallas objected; and it may well be that, in the presence of death, Byron could not "guard his unbelief," or refrain from a renewed questioning of the "Grand Perhaps." Stanza for stanza, the new version is an improvement on the original. (See Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, 1824, p. 169. See, too, letters to Hodgson, September 3 and September 13, 1811: Letters, 1898, ii. 18, 34.)]

      *]The Sadducees did not believe in the Resurrection.—[MS. D.]

      **]

       But look upon a scene that once was fair.—[Erased.] Zion's holy hill which thou wouldst fancy fair.—[Erased.]

      ***]

       As those, which thou delight'st to rear in upper air.—[Erased.] Yet lovs't too well to bid thine erring brother share.—[D. erased.]

      *][See letter to Dallas, October 14, 1811.]

      The last, the worst dull Robber, who was he? Blush Scotland such a slave thy son could beEngland! I joy no child he was of thine: Thy freeborn men revere what once was free, Nor tear the Sculpture from its saddening shrine, Nor bear the spoil away athwart the weeping Brine.—[MS. D. erased.]

      This be the wittol Picts ignoble boast.—[MS. D.] To rive what Goth and Turk, and Time hath spared: Cold and accursed as his native coast.—[MS. D. erased]

      'Quod non fecerunt Goti,

       Hoc fecerunt Scoti'"

      (Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 299). M. Darmesteter quotes the original: "mot sur les Barberini" ("Quod non fecere Barbari, Fecere Barberini"). It may be added that Scotchmen are named among the volunteers who joined the Hanoverian mercenaries in the Venetian invasion of Greece in 1686. (See The Curse of Minerva: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 463, note 1; Finlay's Hist. of Greece, v. 189.)]

      What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue, Albion was happy in Athenæ's tears? Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung, Let it not vibrate in pale Europe's ears,B The Saviour Queen, the free Britannia, wears The last poor blunder of a bleeding land: That she, whose generous aid her name endears, Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand, Which Envious Eld forbore and Tyrants left to stand.—[MS.