Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: annotations and whatnot
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto I [continued]
XIV.
On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone, 1
And winds are rude in Biscay's2 sleepless bay.
Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon,
New shores descried make every bosom gay;
And Cintra's3 mountain greets them on their way.
And Tagus4 dashing onward to the deep,
His fabled golden tribute bent to pay;
And soon on board the Lusian5 pilots leap,
And steer 'twixt fertile shores where yet few rustics reap.
XV.
Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land:
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!
But man would mar them with an impious hand:
And when the Almighty lifts his fiercest scourge
'Gainst those who most transgress his high command,
With treble vengeance will his hot shafts6 urge
Gaul's locust host,7 and earth from fellest foemen purge.
XVI.
What beauties doth Lisboa, first unfold!
Her image floating on that noble tide,
Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,
But now whereon a thousand keels did ride
Of mighty strength, since Albion was allied,
And to the Lusians did her aid afford:
A nation swoln with ignorance and pride,
Who lick yet loathe the hand that waves the sword
To save them from the wrath of Gaul's unsparing lord.
XVII.
But whoso entereth within this town,
That, sheening far, celestial seems to be,
Disconsolate will wander up and down,8
'Mid many things unsightly to strange ee;9
For hut and palace show like filthily:
The dingy denizens are rear'd in dirt;
Ne personage of high or mean degree
Doth care for cleaness of surtout10 or shirt;
Though shent with Egypt's plague, unkempt, unwash'd, unhurt.
XVIII.
Poor, paltry slaves! yet born 'midst noblest scenes -
Why, Nature, waste thy wonders on such men?
Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah, me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen,
To follow half on which the eye dilates
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken
Than those whereof such things the bard11 relates,
Who to the awe-struck world unlock'd Elysium's gates?
XIX.
The horrid crags, by toppling convent crown'd,
The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrown'd,
The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
The tender azure12 of the unruffled deep,
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
The vine on high, the willow branch below,
Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.
XX
Then slowly climb the many-winding way,
And frequent turn to linger as you go,
From loftier rocks new loveliness survey,
And rest ye at 'Our Lady's house of woe;'13
Where frugal monks their little relics show,
And sundry legends to the stranger tell:
Here impious men have punish'd been, and lo!
Deep in yon cave Honorious14 long did dwell,
In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.
XXI
And here and there, as up the crags you spring,
Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path;
Yet deem not these devotion's offering -
These are memorials frail of murderous wrath:
For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath
Pour'd forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife,15
Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath;
And grove and glen with thousand such are rife
Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life.16
XXII
On sloping mounds, or in the vale beneath,
Are domes where whilome kings did make repair;
But now the wild flowers round them only breathe;
Yet ruin'd splendour still is lingering there.
And yonder towers the Prince's palace fair:
There thou, too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,17
Once form'd thy Paradise, as not aware
When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,
Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun.
XXIII
Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan,
Beneath yon mountain's ever beautious brow:
But now, as if a thing unblest by Man,
Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou!
Her giant weeds a passage scarce allow
To halls deserted, portals gaping wide:
Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how
Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied;
Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide!
XXIV.
Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened!18
Oh! dome displeasing unto British eye!
With diadem hight foolscap, lo! a fiend,
A little fiend that scoffs incessantly,
There sits in parchment robe array'd, and by
His side is hung a seal and sable scroll,
Where blazon'd glare names known to chivalry,
And sundry signatures adorn the roll,
Whereat the Urchin points and laughs with all his soul.19
XXV.
Convention is the dwarfish demon styled
That foil'd the knights in Marialva's dome:
Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.
Here Folly dash'd to earth the victor's plume,
And Policy regain'd what arms had lost:
For chiefs like ours in vain may laurels bloom!
Woe to the conqu'ring, not the conquer'd host,
Since baffled Triumph droops on Lusitania's coast.
XXVI.
And ever since that martial synod met,
Britannia sickens, Cintra! at thy name;
And folks in office at the mention fret,
And fain would blush, if blush they could, for shame.
How will posterity the deed proclaim!
Will not our own and fellow nations sneer,
To view these champions cheated of their fame,
By foes in fight o'er thrown, yet victors here,
Where Scorn her finger points through many a coming year.
XXVII.
So deem'd the Childe, as o'er the mountains he
Did take his way in solitary guise:
Sweet was the scene, yet soon he thought to flee,
More restless than the swallow in the skies:
Though here awhile he learn'd to moralize,
For Meditation fix'd at times on him;
And conscious Reason whisper'd to despise
His early youth, misspent in maddest whim;
But as he gazed on truth his aching eyes grew dim.
XXVIII.
To horse! to horse! he quits, for ever quits
A scene of peace, though soothing to his soul:
Again he rouses from his moping fits,
But seeks not now the harlot and the bowl.
Onward he flies, nor fix'd as yet the goal
Where he shall rest him on his pilgrimage;
And o'er him many changing scenes must roll
Ere toil his thirst for travel can assuage,
Or he shall calm his breast, or learn experience sage.
XXIX.
Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay,
Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' luckless queen;
And church and court did mingle their array,
And mass and revel were alternate seen;
Lordlings and freres - ill-sorted fry I ween!
But here the Babylonian whore20 hath built
A dome, where flaunts she in such glorious sheen,
That men forget the blood which she hath spilt,
And bow the knee to Pomp that loves to varnish guilt.21
XXX.
O'er vales that teem with fruits, romantic hills.
(Oh, that such hills upheld a free-born race!)
Whereon to gaze the eye with joyaunce fills,
Childe Harold wends through many a pleasant place.
Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase,
And marvel men should quit their easy chair,
The toilsome way, and long, long league to trace,
Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain air,
And life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share.
[more notes soon]
***
Works Cited
Blackwell, Alice Stone. Armenian Poems. Boston: Roberts. (1896)
Byron, George Gordon, Lord. The Poetical Works of Lord Byron. Collected and arranged, with illustrative notes, by Thomas Moore, Lord Jefferson, Sir Walter Scott … &c. … New York: D. Appleton & Company. (1848)
Chew, Samuel C. (ed.) Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and other romantic poems. New York: Odyssey Press. (1936)
Coleridge, E.H. (ed.) The Works of Lord Byron, vol. II. London: J. Murray; New York: C. Scribner's sons. (1899)
- Even before Byron exiled himself from England he was writing about a self-imposed exile, asking those who cared about him to mourn. In this, he falls into a long tradition of poets begging us not to forget them. For example, a line from the Armenian poem by C.A. Totochain, The Wandering Armenian to the Swallow, requests of his father: "Bid him sit down and mourn with tears/ His son’s sad destiny (Blackwell, 130). Byron has this to say: "I leave England without regret — I shall return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was sour as a crab" (Coleridge, 29, ff.1). [back]
- The Bay of Biscay, I suppose. [back]
- A Portuguese city. "Cintra's 'needle-like peaks,' to the north-west of Lisbon, are visible from the mouth of the Tagus" (Coleridge, 31, ff.1) [back]
- A Portuguese river. [back]
- According to McConnell, it is an ancient term for Portuguese, coming from the word "Lusitania" (McConnell, 31, ff. 2). [back]
- Calling Dr. Freud! Sometimes Byron's homoeroticism can be subtle and sometimes not … [back]
- Emperor Napoleon had invaded Portugal at the time Byron was writing, thus the Biblical reference to the plague of locusts. [back]
- Compare these three lines with the Biblical passage from Psalm 59:15, "Let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satified." [back]
- Again, the strange use of "ee" as part of the body. An earlier version of this line reads, "Mid many things that grieve both nose and ee" (Byron, 16, ff.2). [back]
- Greatcoat or overcoat [back]
- McConnell suggests it is Vergil, "who in the 6th book of the Aeneid describes the life of the blessed Elysium" (McConnell, 31, ff 3.), a place of ideal happiness. [back]
- Here is another word the New York TImes Crossword Puzzles claim poets use. Perhaps two hundred years ago, as in Collins' Ode to Pity, "'The sky-worn robes of tenderest blue" (Coleridge, 34, ff.2), but even then he just says blue. [back]
- I do enjoy a curious saint now and then. I remember reading Fernando Vallejo's La Virgen de los Sicarios/ Our Lady of the Assassins (2001) and wondering if there was a Lady of Sonnets somewhere. Of this particular saint, McConnell writes, "The convent of Nossa Señora da Peña, 'Our Lady of Sorrow,' near Lisbon. Monasteries and convents frequently served as way-stations for exhausted travelers" (McConnell, 32, ff 5.). [back]
- Could this be James Daly's character Dr. Honorious from Planet of the Apes (1968)? Or Pope Honorious III who ruled until 1227? No, according to McConnell it was "a religious hermit who lived a life of total seclusion and self-denial in a cave near the convent of Our Lady of Sorrow" (McConnell, 32, ff 6.) … One of the deleted lines to this stanza has Childre Harold crying, "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty hermit!" [back]
- Again I think of Vallejo's novel and marvel at how we love our sinister drama. We even make the "truth" fit our ideas one way or another. Byron himself was guilty of this. "The track from the main road to the convent, rugged and devious, leading up to the mountain, is marked out by numerous crosses now, just as when Byron rode along it in 1809, and it would appear he fell into the mistake of considering that the crosses were erected to show where assassinations had been committed" (Coleridge, 36, ff.1). [back]
- This idea of the land telling its tale of all it has seen runs through other poetry as well. The Armenian poet Raffi, addressing Lake Van (now in Turkey) asks, "Tell me, lake, — for thou hast been a witness/ Of our history from the earliest day, —" (Blackwell, 243). Likewise, Byron writes, "It is a well-known fact, that in the year 1809, the assassinations in the streets of Lisbon and its vicinity were not confined by the Portuguese to their countrymen; but that Englishmen were daily butchered: and so far from redress being obtained, we were requested not to interfere if we perceived any compatriot defending himself against his allies. I was once stopped in the way to the theatre at eight o'clock in the evening, when the streets were not more empty that they generally are at that hour, opposite to an open shop, and in a carriage with a friend: had we not fortunately been armed, I have not the least doubt that we should have 'adorned a tale' instead of telling one" (Byron, 16, ff. 5). [back]
- William Beckford (1760-1844), the enormously wealthy author of Vathek (1784), an oriental romance for which Byron professed great admiration (Chew, 19, ff.275) [back]
- "The Convention of Cintra was signed in the palace of the Marchese Marialva" (Byron, 17, ff. 1). [back]
- Compare these last three line with the lines from Deuteronomy, 11:13, "To love the Lord your God, and to serve him with heart and with all your soul." [back]
- Ishtar, before getting rewritten by Christian prudes as the Whore of Babylon, was the lunar goddess of life and lust. She appears in The Epic of Gilgamesh in the form of Shamhat, a temple prostitute. [back]
- Byron notes, "The extent of Mafra is prodigious; it contains a palace, convent, and most superb church. The six organs are the most beautiful I ever beheld, in point of decoration; we did not hear them, but were told that their tones were correspondent to their splendour. Mafra is termed the Escurial of Portugal" (Byron, 17-18, ff. 7) [back]