Byron: The Last Phase Part 27

When the phantom of Astarte rises, Manfred exclaims:

'Can this be death? there's bloom upon her cheek; But now I see it is no living hue, But a strange hectic.'

He is afraid to look upon her; he cannot speak to her, and implores Nemesis to intercede:

'Bid her speak-- Forgive me, or condemn me.'

Nemesis tells him that she has no authority over Astarte:

'She is not of our order, but belongs To the other powers.'[53]

The fine appeal of Manfred cannot have been addressed by Byron to his sister:

'Hear me, hear me-- Astarte! my beloved! speak to me: I have so much endured--so much endure-- Look on me! the grave hath not changed thee more Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me Too much, as I loved thee: we were not made To torture thus each other--though it were The deadliest sin to love as we have loved.

Say that thou loath'st me not--that I do bear This punishment for both--that thou wilt be One of the blessed--and that I shall die.

'I cannot rest.

I know not what I ask, nor what I seek: _I feel but what thou art_, and what I am; And I would hear yet once before I perish The voice which was my music[54]--speak to me!

Speak to me! I have wandered o'er the earth, And never found thy likeness.'

When Manfred implores Astarte to forgive him, she is silent. It is not a matter for forgiveness. He entreats her to speak to him, so that he may once more hear that sweet voice, even though it be for the last time. The silence is broken by the word 'Farewell!' Manfred, whose doom is sealed, cries in agony:

'What I have done is done; I bear within A torture which could nothing gain (from others).

The Mind, which is immortal, makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts,-- Is its own origin of ill and end-- And its own place and time: I was my own destroyer, and will be My own hereafter...

The hand of Death is on me...

All things swim around me, and the Earth Heaves, as it were, beneath me. Fare thee well!'

So far as we know, there is nothing in the whole length of this poem to suggest anything abnormal; and it is hard to understand what resemblance Byron's contemporaries could have discovered between the Astarte of 'Manfred' and Augusta Leigh! Enough has been quoted to show that Byron was not thinking of his sister when he wrote 'Manfred,' but of her whose life he had blasted, and whose 'sacred name' he trembled to reveal.

In April, 1817, Byron was informed by Mrs. Leigh that Mary Chaworth and her husband had made up their differences. The 'Lament of Ta.s.so' was written in that month, and Byron's thoughts were occupied, as usual, with the theme of all his misery.

'That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind, Hath been the sin that shuts me from mankind; But let them go, or torture as they will, My heart can multiply thine image still; Successful Love may sate itself away; The wretched are the faithful; 'tis their fate To have all feeling, save the one, decay, And every pa.s.sion into one dilate, As rapid rivers into Ocean pour; But ours is fathomless, and hath no sh.o.r.e.'

In 'Mazeppa' Byron tells how he met 'Theresa' in that month of June, and how 'through his brain the thought did pa.s.s that there was something in her air which would not doom him to despair.' This incident is again referred to in 'Don Juan.' The Count Palatine is, probably, intended as a sketch of Mary's husband.

'The Duel,' which was written in December, 1818, is addressed to Mary Chaworth:

'I loved thee--I will not say _how_, Since things like these are best forgot.'

Byron alludes to 'the curse of blood,' with, 'many a bar and many a feud,'

which 'rolled like a wide river between them':

'Alas! how many things have been Since we were friends; for I alone Feel more for thee than can be shown.'

In the so-called 'Stanzas to the Po,' we find the same prolonged note of suffering. Writing to Murray (May 8, 1820), Byron says:

'I sent a copy of verses to Mr. Kinnaird (they were written last year on crossing the Po) which must _not_ be published. Pray recollect this, as they were mere verses of society, and written from private feelings and pa.s.sions.'

In view of the secrecy which Byron consistently observed, respecting his later intimacy with Mary Chaworth, the publication of these verses would have been highly indiscreet. They were written in June, 1819, after Mary had for some time been reconciled to her husband. She was then living with him at Colwick Hall, near Nottingham.

Ostensibly these stanzas form an apostrophe to the River Po, and the 'lady of the land' was, of course, the Guiccioli. Medwin, to whom Byron gave the poem, believed that the river apostrophized by the poet was the River Po, whose 'deep and ample stream' was 'the mirror of his heart.' But it seems perfectly clear that, if this poem referred only to the Countess Guiccioli, there could have been no objection to its publication in England. The reading public in those days knew nothing of Byron's liaisons abroad, and his mystic allusion to foreign rivers and foreign ladies would have left the British public cold.

A scrutiny of these perplexing stanzas suggests that they were adapted, from a fragment written in early life, to meet the conditions of 1819.

Evidently Mary Chaworth was once more 'the ocean to the river of his thoughts,' and the stream indicated in the opening stanza was not the Po, but the River Trent, which flows close to the ancient walls of Colwick, where 'the lady of his love' was then residing. To a.s.sist the reader, we insert the poem, having merely transposed three stanzas to make its purport clearer

I.

'River, that rollest by the ancient walls, Where dwells the Lady of my love, when she Walks by the brink, _and there perchance recalls A faint and fleeting memory of me_:

II.

'She will look on thee--I have looked on thee, Full of that thought: and from that moment ne'er Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see Without the inseparable sigh for her!

III.

'But that which keepeth us apart is not Distance, nor depth of wave, nor s.p.a.ce of earth, But the distraction of a various lot, As various the climates of our birth.

IV.

'What if thy deep and ample stream should be A mirror of my heart, where she may read The thousand thoughts _I now betray to thee_, Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

V.

'What do I say--a mirror of my heart?

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?

Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; And such as thou art were my pa.s.sions long.

VI.

'Time may have somewhat tamed them--not for ever; Thou overflowest thy banks, and not for aye Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away:

VII.

'But left long wrecks behind, and now again, Borne on our old unchanged career, we move: Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main, And I,--to loving _one_ I should not love.

VIII.

'My blood is all meridian; were it not, I had not left my clime, nor should I be, In spite of tortures, ne'er to be forgot, A slave again to Love--at least of thee.

IX.

'The current I behold will sweep beneath Her native walls,[55] and murmur at her feet; Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe The twilight air, unharmed by summer's heat.