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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
CHILDE HAROLD sailed, and passed the barren spot | |
| Where sad Penelope o’erlooked the wave; | |
| And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot, | |
| The lover’s refuge, and the Lesbian’s grave. | |
| Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save | 5 |
| That breast imbued with such immortal fire? | |
| Could she not live who life eternal gave? | |
| If life eternal may await the lyre, | |
| That only heaven to which earth’s children may aspire. | |
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| ’T was on a Grecian autumn’s gentle eve | 10 |
| Childe Harold hailed Leucadia’s cape afar: | |
| A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave: | |
| Oft did he mark the scenes of vanished war, | |
| Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar; | |
| Mark them unmoved, for he would not delight | 15 |
| (Born beneath some remote inglorious star) | |
| In themes of bloody fray, or gallant fight, | |
| But loathed the bravo’s trade, and laughed at martial wight. | |
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| But when he saw the evening star above | |
| Leucadia’s far-projecting rock of woe, | 20 |
| And hailed the last resort of fruitless love, | |
| He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow; | |
| And as the stately vessel glided slow | |
| Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount, | |
| He watched the billows’ melancholy flow, | 25 |
| And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont, | |
| More placid seemed his eye, and smooth his pallid front. | |
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