Lord Byron, The Major Works

Lord Byron, The Major Works, including Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Ed. Jerome J. McGann, Oxford University Press, 2000.

Even Satan’s self with thee might dread to dwell,

And in thy skull discern a deeper hell.

(English Bards and Scotch Reviewers)

But since life at most a jest is,

…

Still to laugh by far the best is,

(Lines to Mr Hodgson)

Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell,

In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.

(Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto I)

Vitality of poison,—a quick root

Which feeds these deadly branches; for it were

As nothing did we die; but Life will suit

Itself to Sorrow’s most detested fruit,

Like to the apples on the Dead Sea’s shore,

All ashes to the taste: Did man compute

Existence by enjoyment, and count o’er

Such hours ’gainst years of life,—say, would he name threescore?

(Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III)

But these are deeds which should not pass away,

And names that must not wither, though the earth

Forgets her empires with a just decay,

The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth;

The high, the mountain-majesty of worth

Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,

And from its immortality look forth

In the sun’s face, like yonder Alpine snow,

Imperishably pure beyond all things below.

(Childe Harold Pilgrimages, Canto III)

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,

Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse

To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,

To comprehend, but never love thy verse,

Although no deeper Moralist rehearse

Our little life, …

(Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV)

His early dreams of good outsripp’d the truth,

And troubled manhood followed baffled youth;

(Lara)

But haughty still, and loth himself to blame,

He called on Nature’s self to share the shame,

And charged all faults upon the fleshly form,

She gave to clog the soul, and feast the worm;

(Lara)

Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle,

And gaze upon the sea;

That element may meet thy smile,

It ne’er was ruled by thee!

(Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte)

There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,

When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay;

(Stanzas for Music [paradox])

The underearth inhabitants—are they

But mingled millions decomposed to clay—

…

Or have they their own language—and a sense

Of breathless being—darkened and intense—

As midnight in her solitude—…

…

The dead are thy inheritors—and we

But bubbles on thy serface: —and the key

Of thy profundity is in the grave, …

(A Fragment)

I have been cunning in mine overthrow

The careful pilot of my proper woe.

(Epistle to Augusta)

Manfred: The lamp must be replenish’d, but even then

It will not burn so long as I must watch:

My slumbers—if I slumber—are not sleep,

But a continuance of enduring thought,

Which then I can resist not: in my heart

There is a vigil, and these eyes but close

To look within; …

(Manfred, I.I.)

Manfred: Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most

Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,

(Manfred, I.I., sorrow is knowledge and knowledge is sorrow)

…Good, or evil, life,

Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,

Have been to me as rain unto the sands,

Since that all-nameless hour. I have no dread,

And feel the curse to have no natural fear,

(Manfred, I.I., the curse is estrangement)

…ye, to whom the tops

Of mountains inaccessible are haunts,

And earth’s and ocean’s caves familiar things—

I call upon ye by the written charm

Which gives me power upon you—Rise! Appear!

…

By the strong curse which is upon my soul,

(Manfred, I.I., sin is the cause of the curse; curse is estrangement and power over language)

First Spirit: Mortal! to thy bidding bow’d,

From my mansion in the cloud,

Which the breath of twilight builds,

And the summer’s sun-set gilds

With the azure and vermillion,

Which is mix’d for my pavilion;

(Manfred, I.I)

Second Spirit: Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains,

They crowned him long ago

On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,

With a diadem of snow.

…

The Avalanche is his hand;

But ere it fall, that thundering ball

Must pause for my command.

…

I am the spirit of the place,

Could make the mountain bow

And quiver to his cavern’d base—

And what with me wouldst Thou?

(Manfred, I.I.)

Seventh Spirit: The star which rules thy destiny,

Was ruled, ere earth began, by me:

…

An thou! beneath its influence born—

Thou worm! whom I obey and scorn—

Forced by a power (which is not thine,

And lent thee but to make thee mine)

For this brief moment to descend,

(Manfred, I.I., language)

The Seven Spirits: What wouldst thou with us, son of mortals—say?

Manfred: Forgetfulness—

First Spirit: Of what—of whom—and why?

Manfred: Of that which is within me; read it thee—

Ye know it, and I cannot utter it.

First Spirit: We can but give thee that which we possess:

Ask of us subjects, sovereignty, the power

O’er earth, the whole, or portion…

(Manfred, I.I.)

First Spirit: It is not in our essence, in our skill;

But—thou mayst die.

Manfred:                    Will death bestow it on me?

First Spirit: We are immortal, and do not forget;

…

Manfred: Ye mock me—but the power which brought ye here

Hath made you mine. Slaves, scoff not at my will!

The mind, the spirit, the Promethean spark,

The lightning of my being, is as bright,

Pervading, and far-darting as your own,

(Manfred, I.I., language)

Manfred: I feel the impulse—yet I do not plunge;

I see the peril—yet do not recede;

And my brain reels—and yet my foot is firm:

(Manfred, I.II.)

[The Shepherd’s pipe in the distance is heard]

Manfred: The natural music of the mountain reed—

For here the patriarchal days are not

A pastoral fable—pipes in the liberal air,

Mix’d with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;

My soul would drink those echoes.—Oh, that I were

The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,

A living voice, a breathing harmony,

A bodiless enjoyment—born and dying

With the blest tone which made me!

(Manfred, I.II)

Manfred: I tell thee, man! I have lived many years,

Many long years, but they are nothing now

To those which I must number: ages—ages—

…

Chamois Hunter: Why, on the brow the seal of middle age

Hath scarce been set; I am thine elder far.

Manfred: Think’st thou existence doth depend on time?

It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine

Have made my days and nights imperishable,

(Manfred, II.I., guilt and hell extend time)

Manfred: …I can bear—

However wretchedly, ’tis still to bear—

In life what others could not brook to dream,

(Manfred, II.I)

Manfred: … From my youth upwards

My spirits walk’d not with the souls of men,

Nor look’d upon the earth with human eyes;

The thirst of their ambition was not mine,

The aim of their existence was not mine;

…

I said, with men, and with the thoughts of men,

I held but slight communion; but instead,

My joy was in the Wilderness, …

…

Or to look, list’ning, on the scattered leaves,

While Autumn winds were at their evening song.

These were my pastimes, and to be alone;

For if the beings, of whom I was one,—

Hating to be so,—cross’d me in my path,

I felt myself degraded back to them,

And was all clay again. …

(Manfred, II.II)

Manfred: …I have not named to thee

Father or mother, mistress, friend, or being,

With whom I wore the chain of human ties;

If I had such, they seem’d not such to me—

Yet there was one—

(Manfred, II.II)

Manfred: … yet we live,

Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.

(Manfred, II.II. How I hate this live I never want to leave)

All the Spirits: Prostrate thyself, and thy condemned clay,

Child of the Earth! or dread the worst.

Manfred: I know it;

And yet ye see I kneel not.

Fourth Spirit: ’Twill be taught thee.

Manfred. ’Tis taught already;—many a night on the earth,

On the bare ground, have I bow’d down my face,

And strew’d my head with ashes; I have known

The fullness of humiliation, for

I sunk before my vain despair, and knelt

To my own desolation.

Fifth Spirit: Dost thou dare

Refuse to Arimanes on his throne

What the whole earth accords, behold not

The terror of his Glory—Crouch! I say.

Manfred: Bid him bow down to that which is above him,

The overruling Infinite—the Maker

Who made him not for worship—let him kneel,

And we will kneel together.

(Manfred, II.IV)

Herman: … thou hast dwelt within the castle—

How many years is’t?

Manuel: Ere Count Manfred’s birth,

I served his father, whom he nought resembles.

…

Manuel: Count Sigismund was proud,—but gay and free,—

A warrior and a reveler; he dwelt not

With books and solitude, nor made the night

A gloomy vigil, but a festal time,

Merrier than day;

(Manfred, III.III, Hamlet)

Manfred: Look there, I say,

And steadfastly;—now tell me what thou seest?

Abbot: That which should shake me,—but I fear it not—

I see a dusk and awful figure rise

Like an infernal god from out the earth;

(Manfred, III, III)

Spirit: Come!

Abbot: What are thou, unknown being? Answer!—Speak!

Spirit: The genius of this mortal.—Come! ’tis time.

Manfred: I am prepared for all things, but deny

The power which summons me. Who sent thee here?

Spirit: Thou’lt know anon—Come! Come!

Manfred: I have commanded

Things of an essence greater far than thine,

And striven with thy masters. Get thee hence!

Spirit: Mortal! thine hour is come—Away! I say.

Manfred: I knew, and know my hour is come, but not

To render up my soul to such as thee:

Away! I’ll die as I have lived—alone.

(Manfred, III, III)

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,

Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,

…

…not a single accent seems uncouth,

Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting, guttural,

Which we’re oblig’d to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.

(Beppo)

Perfect she was, but as perfection is

Inspid in this naughty world of ours,

(Don Juan)

A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,

And mischief-making monkey from his birth;

(Don Juan)

’Tis sweet to hear the watchdog’s honest bark

Bay deep-mouth’d welcome as we draw near home;

(Don Juan)

…this ambrosial sin, …

(Don Juan)

I’m fond of fire, and crickets, and all that,

A lobster-salad, and champagne, and chat.

(Don Juan)

My poem’s epic, and is meant to be

Divided in twelve books; each book containing,

With love, and war, a heavy gale at sea,

A list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning,

(Don Juan, The Tunnel)

My days of love are over, …

…

The copious use of claret is forbid too,

So for a good old-gentlemanly vice,

I think I must take up with avarice.

(Don Juan)

But I being fond of true philosophy,

Say very often to myself, ‘Alas!

All things that have been born were born to die,

And flesh (which Death mows down to hay) is grass;

You’ve pass’d your youth not so unpleasantly,

And if you had it o’er again—’twould pass—

So thank your stars that matters are no worse,

And read your Bible, sir, and mind your purse.’

(Don Juan)

There’s nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms

As rum and true religion; …

(Don Juan)

But man is a carnivorous production,

And must have meals, at least one meal a day;

(Don Juan)

And the same night there fell a shower of rain,

For which their mouths gaped, like the cracks of earth

When dried to summer dust; till taught by pain,

Men really know not what good water’s worth;

If you had been in Turkey or in Spain,

Or with a famish’d boat’s –crew had your berth,

Or in the desert heard the camel’s bell,

You’d wish yourself where Truth is—in a well.

(Don Juan)

A virgin always on her maid relies

(Don Juan)

Much English I cannot pretend to speak,

Learning that language chiefly from its preachers,

Barrow, South, Tillotson, whom every week

I study, also Blair, the highest reachers

Of eloquence in piety and prose—

I hate your poets, so read none of those.

(Don Juan)

Then came her freedom, for she had no mother,

So that, her father being at sea, she was

Free as a married woman, …

…

The freest she that ever…

(Don Juan)

And the small ripple split upon the beach

Scarcely o’erpassed the cream of your champagne,

When o’er the brim the sparkling bumpers reach,

That spring-dew of the spirit! the heart’s rain!

Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach

Who please,—the more because they preach in vain,—

Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter,

Sermons and soda water the day after.

…

…Get very drunk; and when

You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then.

/

Ring for your valet—bid him quickly bring

Some hock and soda-water, then you’ll know

A pleasure worthy Xerxes the great king;

(Don Juan)

They fear’d no eyes nor ears on that lone beach,

(Don Juan)

‘Eat, drink, and love, what can the rest avail us?’

(Don Juan)

Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine—

(Don Juan)

A day of gold from out an age of iron

Is all that life allows the luckiest sinner;

(Don Juan)

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Stories

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Stories, Oxford University Press, 1998.

  Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old. His father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office as student at law, errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. (Bartleby, The Scrivener, 9)

"Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?"

"I would prefer not to."

"Will you tell me any thing about yourself?"

"I would prefer not to."

"But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel friendly towards you."

He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust of Cicero, which as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my head.

"What is your answer, Bartleby?" said I, after waiting a considerable time for a reply, during which his countenance remained immovable, only there was the faintest conceivable tremor of the white attenuated mouth.

"At present I prefer to give no answer," he said, and retired into his hermitage.

It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner on this occasion nettled me. Not only did there seem to lurk in it a certain calm disdain, but his perverseness seemed ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage and indulgence he had received from me.

Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my offices, nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind. At last, familiarly drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat down and said: "Bartleby, never mind then about revealing your history; but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with the usages of this office. Say now you will help to examine papers to-morrow or next day: in short, say now that in a day or two you will begin to be a little reasonable: - say so, Bartleby."

"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable," was his mildly cadaverous reply. (23)

The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery. Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon doing no more writing.
"Why, how now? what next?" exclaimed I, "do no more writing?"
"No more."
"And what is the reason?"
"Do you not see the reason for yourself," he indifferently replied. (25)

But he answered not a word; like the last column of some ruined temple, he remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room. (27)
The yard was entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the common prisoners. The surrounding walls, of amazing thickness, kept off all sounds behind them. The Egyptian character of the masonry weighed upon me with its gloom. (40)

And as for solitariness; the great forests of the north, the expanses ofunnavigated waters, the Greenland ice-fields, are the profoundest ofsolitudes to a human observer; still the magic of their changeable tidesand seasons mitigates their terror; because, though unvisited by men,those forests are visited by the May; the remotest seas reflect familiarstars even as Lake Erie does; and in the clear air of a fine Polar day,the irradiated, azure ice shows beautifully as malachite.

But the special curse, as one may call it, of the Encantadas, that whichexalts them in desolation above Idumea and the Pole, is, that to themchange never comes; neither the change of seasons nor of sorrows. Cut bythe Equator, they know not autumn, and they know not spring; whilealready reduced to the lees of fire, ruin itself can work little moreupon them. The showers refresh the deserts; but in these isles, rainnever falls. Like split Syrian gourds left withering in the sun, theyare cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky. "Have mercyupon me," the wailing spirit of the Encantadas seems to cry, "and sendLazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool mytongue, for I am tormented in this flame." (The Encantadas, 108)

Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, thatI know not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusionconcerning the Gallipagos. For, often in scenes of social merriment, andespecially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned mansions, sothat shadows are thrown into the further recesses of an angular andspacious room, making them put on a look of haunted undergrowth oflonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades by my fixed gazeand sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging fromthose imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the floor, theghost of a gigantic tortoise, with "Memento * * * * *" burning in liveletters upon his back. (111-112)

Of this maritime Chief of Police the ship's-corporals, so called, were the immediate subordinates, and compliant ones; and this, as is to be noted in some business departments ashore, almost to a degree inconsistent with entire moral volition. His place put various converging wires of underground influence under the Chief's control, capable when astutely worked thro' his understrappers of operating to the mysterious discomfort, if nothing worse, of any of the sea-commonalty. (Awkward) (Billy Budd, Sailor, 302)

When Billy saw the culprit's naked back under the scourge gridironed with red welts, and worse; when he marked the dire expression on the liberated man's face as with his woolen shirt flung over him by the executioner he rushed forward from the spot to bury himself in the crowd, Billy was horrified. (typical weak afterthought of an ending) (303)

Well then, in his mysterious little difficulty, going in quest of the wrinkled one, Billy found him off duty in a dog-watch ruminating by himself, seated on a shot-box of the upper-gun-deck, now and then surveying with a somewhat cynical regard certain of the more swaggering promenaders there. Billy recounted his trouble, again wondering how it all happened. The salt seer attentively listened, accompanying the Foretopman's recital with queer twitchings of his wrinkles and problematical little sparkles of his small ferret eyes. Making an end of his story, the Foretopman asked, "And now, Dansker, do tell me what you think of it."  The old man, shoving up the front of his tarpaulin and deliberately rubbing the long slant scar at the point where it entered the thin hair, laconically said, "Baby Budd, Jemmy Legs" (meaning the Master-at-arms) "is down on you."

"Jimmy Legs!” ejaculated Billy, his welkin eyes expanding; "what for? Why he calls me the sweet and pleasant fellow, they tell me."

"Does he so?" grinned the grizzled one; then said, "Ay, Baby Lad, a sweet voice has Jimmy Legs."

"No, not always. But to me he has. I seldom pass him but there comes a pleasant word."

"And that's because he's down upon you, Baby Budd."

Such reiteration along with the manner of it, incomprehensible to a novice, disturbed Billy almost as much as the mystery for which he had sought explanation. (305)

What was the matter with the Master-at-arms? And, be the matter what it might, how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd with whom, prior to the affair of the spilled soup, he had never come into any special contact, official or otherwise? What indeed could the trouble have to do with one so little inclined to give offence as the merchant-ship's peacemaker, even him who in Claggart's own phrase was "the sweet and pleasant young fellow"? Yes, why should Jimmy Legs, to borrow the Dansker's expression, be down on the Handsome Sailor?

But, at heart and not for nothing, as the late chance encounter may indicate to the discerning, down on him, secretly down on him, he assuredly was. (annoyingly folksy, 307)

In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato, a list attributed to him, occurs this: "Natural Depravity: a depravity according to nature." A definition which tho' savoring of Calvinism, by no means involves Calvin's dogmas as to total mankind. Evidently its intent makes it applicable but to individuals. Not many are the examples of this depravity which the gallows and jail supply. At any rate for notable instances, since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in them, but invariably are dominated by intellectuality, one must go elsewhere. Civilization, especially if of the austerer sort, is auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It has its certain negative virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It never allows wine to get within its guard. It is not going too far to say that it is without vices or small sins. There is a phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything mercenary or avaricious. In short the depravity here meant partakes nothing of the sordid or sensual. It is serious, but free from acerbity. Though no flatterer of mankind it never speaks ill of it. (Outmoded. Before the banality of evil. 309)

Reason, … implement for effecting the irrational. That is to say: Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgement sagacious and sound.

These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their lunacy is not continuous but occasional, (310)

…like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it. (312)

Nor at first was he without some surprise that one who so far as he had hitherto come under his notice had shown considerable tact in his function should in this particular evince such lack of it. (326)

But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King. … So little is that true, that in receiving our commissions we in the most  important regards ceased to be natural free agents. When war is declared are we the commissioned fighters previously consulted? We fight at command. If our judgments approve the war, that is but coincidence. (342)

If in vain the good Chaplain sought to impress the young barbarian with ideas of death akin to those conveyed in the skull, dial, and cross-bones on old tombstones; equally futile to all appearance were his efforts to bring home to him the thought of salvation and a Saviour. Billy listened, but less out of awe or reverence perhaps than from a certain natural politeness; doubtless at bottom regarding all that in much the same way that most mariners of his class take any discourse abstract or out of the common tone of the work-a-day world. And this sailor-way of taking clerical discourse is not wholly unlike the way in which the pioneer of Christianity full of transcendent miracles was received long ago on tropic isles by any superior savage so called--a Tahitian say of Captain Cook’s time or shortly after that time. Out of natural courtesy he received, but did not appropriate. It was like a gift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the fingers do not close. (352)

The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable that with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished that an architectural finial. (358)