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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
HERE the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, | |
| The apostle of affliction, he who threw | |
| Enchantment over passion, and from woe | |
| Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew | |
| The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew | 5 |
| How to make madness beautiful, and cast | |
| O’er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue | |
| Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past | |
| The eyes, which o’er them shed tears feelingly and fast. | |
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| His love was passion’s essence—as a tree | 10 |
| On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame | |
| Kindled he was, and blasted: for to be | |
| Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same. | |
| But his was not the love of living dame, | |
| Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, | 15 |
| But of ideal beauty, which became | |
| In him existence, and o’erflowing teems | |
| Along his burning page, distempered though it seems. | |
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| This breathed itself to life in Julie, this | |
| Invested her with all that ’s wild and sweet; | 20 |
| This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss | |
| Which every morn his fevered lip would greet, | |
| From hers, who but with friendship his would meet; | |
| But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast | |
| Flashed the thrilled spirit’s love-devouring heat; | 25 |
| In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest, | |
| Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest. | |
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| His life was one long war with self-sought foes, | |
| Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind | |
| Had grown suspicion’s sanctuary, and chose | 30 |
| For its own cruel sacrifice the kind, | |
| ’Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind. | |
| But he was phrensied,—wherefore, who may know? | |
| Since cause might be which skill could never find; | |
| But he was phrensied by disease or woe, | 35 |
| To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show. | |
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| For then he was inspired, and from him came, | |
| As from the Pythian’s mystic cave of yore, | |
| Those oracles which set the world in flame, | |
| Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more: | 40 |
| Did he not this for France? which lay before | |
| Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years, | |
| Broken and trembling, to the yoke she bore, | |
| Till by the voice of him and his compeers, | |
| Roused up to too much wrath, which follows o’ergrown fears? | 45 |
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