Happy Birthday, Byron

Lupton, Lord Byron, 1824

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,

    With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing

    Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake

    Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring.

    This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing         

    To waft me from distraction; once I loved

    Torn ocean’s roar, but thy soft murmuring

    Sounds sweet as if a Sister’s voice reproved,

That I with stern delights should e’er have been so moved.

 

    It is the hush of night, and all between         

    Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,

    Mellow’d and mingling, yet distinctly seen,

    Save darken’d Jura, whose capt heights appear

    Precipitously steep; and drawing near,

    There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,         

    Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear

    Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,

Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;

 

    He is an evening reveller, who makes

    His life an infancy, and sings his fill;         

    At intervals, some bird from out the brakes

    Starts into voice a moment, then is still.

    There seems a floating whisper on the hill,

    But that is fancy, for the starlight dews

    All silently their tears of love instil,         

    Weeping themselves away, till they infuse

Deep into nature’s breast the spirit of her hues.

 

    Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

    If in your bright leaves we would read the fate

    Of men and empires,—’tis to be forgiven,         

    That in our aspirations to be great,

    Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state,

    And claim a kindred with you; for ye are

    A beauty and a mystery, and create

    In us such love and reverence from afar,         

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

 

    All heaven and earth are still—though not in sleep,

    But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;

    And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:—

    All heaven and earth are still: From the high host         

    Of stars, to the lull’d lake and mountain-coast,

    All is concenter’d in a life intense,

    Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,

    But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all Creator and defence.         

 

    Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt

    In solitude, where we are least alone;

    A truth, which through our being then doth melt,

    And purifies from self: it is a tone,

    The soul and source of music, which makes known         

    Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm

    Like to the fabled Cytherea’s zone,

    Binding all things with beauty;—’t would disarm

The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.

 

    Not vainly did the early Persian make         

    His altar the high places, and the peak

    Of earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus take

    A fit and unwall’d temple, there to seek

    The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,

    Uprear’d of human hands. Come, and compare         

    Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,

    With Nature’s realms of worship, earth and air,

Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy pray’r!

 

    The sky is changed!—and such a change! Oh night,

    And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,         

    Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light

    Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,

    From peak to peak, the rattling crags among

    Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,

    But every mountain now hath found a tongue,         

    And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,

Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

 

    And this is in the night:—Most glorious night!

    Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be

    A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,—         

    A portion of the tempest and of thee!

    How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,

    And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!

    And now again ’tis black,—and now, the glee

    Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,         

As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth.

 

    Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between

    Heights which appear as lovers who have parted

    In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,

    That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;         

    Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,

    Love was the very root of the fond rage

    Which blighted their life’s bloom, and then departed;

    Itself expired, but leaving them an age

Of years all winters,—war within themselves to wage.         

 

    Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,

    The mightiest of the storms hath ta’en his stand:

    For here, not one, but many, make their play,

    And fling their thunder-bolts from hand to hand,

    Flashing and cast around: of all the band,         

    The brightest through these parted hills hath fork’d

    His lightnings,—as if he did understand,

    That in such gaps as desolation work’d,

There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurk’d.

 

    Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye!         

    With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul

    To make these felt and feeling, well may be

    Things that have made me watchful; the far roll

    Of your departing voices, is the knoll

    Of what in me is sleepless,—if I rest.         

    But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?

    Are ye like those within the human breast?

Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?

 

    Could I embody and unbosom now

    That which is most within me,—could I wreak         

    My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw

    Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,

    All that I would have sought, and all I seek,

    Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe—into one word,

    And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;         

    But as it is, I live and die unheard,

With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.

 

Lord Byron, born on this day in 1788, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, "Canto the Third"