My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 39

_Cain._ I have done this-- The loveliest thing I know is loveliest nearest.

_Lucifer._ What is that?

_Cain._ My sister Adah.--All the stars of heaven, The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world-- The hues of twilight--the sun's gorgeous coming-- His setting indescribable, which fills My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold Him sink, and feel my heart float softly with him Along that western paradise of clouds-- The forest shade--the green bough--the bird's voice-- The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love, And mingles with the song of cherubim, As the day closes over Eden's walls:-- All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart, Like Adah's face: I turn from earth and heaven To gaze on it.

Even those charming children of Nature, Haidee and Dudu, in "Don Juan,"

and the Neuha, in "The Island," scarcely meant to represent more than the visible material part of the ideal woman he could love if he met with her--even these charming creatures possess not only the pagan beauty of form, but also Christian beauty, that of the soul: goodness, gentleness, tenderness. And it is also to be remarked, that by degrees, as time wore on, Lord Byron's female types rose in the moral scale, while still preserving their adorable charms, and their harmony with the state of civilization wherein he placed them. For instance, his Haidee, in the second canto of "Don Juan," written at Venice in 1818, is not worth, morally, the Haidee of the fourth canto, written at Ravenna in 1820. Beneath his pen at Ravenna, the adorable maiden evidently becomes spiritualized. This may be attributed to the poet's state of mind, for he was quite different at Ravenna to what he had been at Venice. The portrait of this lovely child is certainly very charming in 1818, but, while admiring her spotless Grecian brow, her beautiful hair, large Eastern eyes, and n.o.ble mouth, we can not help remarking something vague and undecided about her. And even in those fine verses where he says that Haidee's face belongs to a type inconceivable for human thought, and still more impossible of execution for mortal chisel, it is still the beauty of form that he shows you; while the Haidee of Ravenna is quite spiritualized in all her exquisite beauty.

After having described her as she appeared in her delicious Eastern costume, Lord Byron expresses himself in these terms:--

"Her hair's long auburn waves down to her heel Flow'd like an alpine torrent, which the sun Dyes with his morning light,--and would conceal Her person if allow'd at large to run; And still they seem'd resentfully to feel The silken fillet's curb, and sought to shun Their bonds, whene'er some Zephyr, caught, began To offer his young pinion as her fan.

"Round her she made an atmosphere of life, The very air seem'd lighter from her eyes, They were so soft and beautiful, and rife With all we can imagine of the skies, And pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife-- Too pure even for the purest human ties; Her overpowering presence made you feel It would not be idolatry to kneel."

And, describing the whiteness of her skin, he says:--

"Day ne'er will break On mountain-tops more heavenly white than her; The eye might doubt of it were well awake, She was so like a vision."

In the sixth canto of "Don Juan"--the hero being in the midst of a harem--all his sympathies are for Dudu, a beautiful Circa.s.sian, who unites to all the charms, all the moral qualities that a slave of the harem might possess. This is the portrait which Lord Byron draws:--

XLII.

"A kind of sleepy Venus seem'd Dudu, Yet very fit to 'murder sleep' in those Who gazed upon her cheek's transcendent hue, Her Attic forehead and her Phidian nose.

XLIII.

"She was not violently lively, but Stole on your spirit like a May-day breaking.

LII.

"Dudu, as has been said, was a sweet creature, Not very das.h.i.+ng, but extremely winning, With the most regulated charms of feature, Which painters can not catch like faces sinning Against proportion--the wild strokes of nature Which they hit off at once in the beginning, Full of expression, right or wrong, that strike, And, pleasing or unpleasing, still are like.

LIII.

"But she was a soft landscape of mild earth, Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet, Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth, Which, if not happiness, is much more nigh it Than are your mighty pa.s.sions and so forth, Which some call 'the sublime:' I wish they'd try it: I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women, And pity lovers rather more than seamen.

LIV.

"But she was pensive more than melancholy, And serious more than pensive, and serene, It may be, more than either: not unholy Her thoughts, at least till now, appear to have been.

The strangest thing was, beauteous, she was wholly Unconscious, albeit turn'd of quick seventeen, That she was fair, or dark, or short, or tall; She never thought about herself at all.

LV.

"And therefore was she kind and gentle as The Age of Gold (when gold was yet unknown)."

As to Neuha, the daughter of Ocean (in "The Island"), his last creation, she is, indeed, the daughter of Nature also, and no less admirable than her sister Haidee, but she is still more highly endowed in a moral sense:--

"The infant of an infant world, as pure From nature--lovely, warm, and premature; Dusky like night, but night with all her stars, Or cavern sparkling with its native spars; With eyes that were a language and a spell, A form like Aphrodite's in her sh.e.l.l, With all her loves around her on the deep, Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep; Yet full of life--for through her tropic cheek The blush would make its way, and all but speak: The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue, Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave, Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.

Such was this daughter of the southern seas, Herself a billow in her energies, To bear the bark of others' happiness.

Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less: Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose Sad proof reduces all things from their hues: She fear'd no ill, because she knew it not."

When, after the combat, she arrives in her bark to save Torquil, the poet exclaims:

"And who the first that springing on the strand, Leap'd like a nereid from her sh.e.l.l to land, With dark but brilliant skin, and dewy eye s.h.i.+ning with love, and hope, and constancy?

Neuha--the fond, the faithful, the adored-- Her heart on Torquil's like a torrent pour'd; And smiled, and wept, and near, and nearer clasp'd As if to be a.s.sured 'twas _him_ she grasp'd; Shuddered to see his yet warm wound, and then, To find it trivial, smiled and wept again.

She was a warrior's daughter, and could bear Such sights, and feel, and mourn, but not despair.

Her lover lived,--nor foes nor fears could blight, That full-blown moment in its all delight: Joy trickled in her tears, joy filled the sob That rock'd her heart till almost heard to throb; And paradise was breathing in the sigh Of nature's child in nature's ecstasy."

"All these sweet creations realize the idea, formed from all time, of surpa.s.sing loveliness, of gentleness with pa.s.sion," justly observes Monsieur Nisard--he who, in his very clever sketch of the ill.u.s.trious poet, so often forms erroneous judgments of Lord Byron. For he also accepted him as he was presented--namely, as the victim of calumny and prejudice; or else he considered him after a system, examining only some _pa.s.sages and one single period_ of the man's and the _poet's_ life, instead of taking the whole career and the general spirit of his writings,--a method also perceivable in his appreciation of Lord Byron's female characters.

Indeed Monsieur Nisard evidently only speaks of the Medoras, Zuleikas, Leilas, and in general of all the types in his Eastern poems, and appertaining to his first period: most fascinating beings undoubtedly, true emanations of the purest and most pa.s.sionate love, but yet as morally inferior to the Angiolinas, Myrrhas, Josephines, Auroras, as his poems of the first period are intellectually inferior to those of the second, beginning with the third canto of "Childe Harold," and as civilized Christian woman is superior to a woman in the harem. But Monsieur Nisard, who has a very systematic way of judging things--wis.h.i.+ng to prove that Lord Byron's loves were quite lawless in their ungovernable strength, filling the whole soul to the absorption of every other sentiment and interest (which might, indeed, perhaps be said of the personages in his Eastern poems), and not able, without contradicting himself, to a.s.sert the same as regards the love and devotion shown by the heroic Myrrhas and virtuous Angiolinas, and other dramatic types, all so different one from the other--has been obliged to omit all mention of them, thus sharing an error common to vain, ignorant critics. Yet these delightful creatures all resemble each other in the one faculty of _loving pa.s.sionately and chastely_, for that is a quality which const.i.tutes the very essence of woman, and Lord Byron's own qualities must always have drawn it out in her. But there is something far beyond beauty and pa.s.sion in these n.o.ble and heroic creations of his second manner.

"Where shall we find," says Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, "a purer, higher character than that of Angiolina, in the 'Doge of Venice?' Among all Shakspeare's female characters there is certainly not one more true, and not only true and natural, which would be slight merit, but true as a type of the highest, rarest order in human nature. Let us stop here for a moment, we are on no common ground; the character of Angiolina has not yet been understood."

Bulwer then quotes the scene between Marian and Angiolina, and after having pointed out its moral beauty, exclaims:--

"What a deep sentiment of the dignity of virtue! Angiolina does not even conceive that she can be suspected, or that the insult offered her required any other justification than the indignation of public opinion."

And Bulwer goes on to quote the verses where Marian asks Angiolina if, when she gave her hand to a man of age so disproportioned, and of a character so opposite to her own, she loved this spouse, this friend of her family; and whether, before marriage, her heart had not beat for some n.o.ble youth more worthy to be the husband of beauty like hers; or whether since, she had met with some one who might have aspired to her lovely self. And after Angiolina's admirable reply, Bulwer says:--

"Is not this conception equal at least to that of Desdemona? Is not her heart equally pure, serene, tender, and at the same time pa.s.sionate, yet with love, not material but _actual_, which, according to Plato, gives a visible form to virtue, and then admits of no other rival. Yet this sublime n.o.ble woman had no cold stiffness in her nature; she forgives Steno, but not from the cold height, of her chast.i.ty.

"'If,' said she to the indignant page, 'oh! if this false and light calumniator were to shed his blood on account of this absurd calumny, never from that moment would my heart experience an hour's happiness, nor enjoy a tranquil slumber.'"

"Here," says Bulwer, "the reader should remark with what delicate artifice the tenderness of s.e.x and charity heighten and warm the snowy coldness of her ethereal superiority. What a union of all woman's finest qualities! Pride that disdains calumny; gentleness that forgives it!

Nothing can be more simply grand than the whole of this character, and the story which enhances it. An old man of eighty is the husband of a young woman, whose heart preserves the calmness of purity; no love episode comes to disturb her serene course, no impure, dishonorable jealousy casts a shade on her bright name. She treads her path through a life of difficulties, like some angelic nature, though quite human by the form she wears."

Wis.h.i.+ng only to call attention to the beauty of the female characters he created, without reference to the other beauties contained in the work, we shall continue to quote Bulwer for the second of these admirable creations of womankind in his dramas, namely, Myrrha. After having praised that magnificent tragedy "Sardanapalus," he adds:--

"But the princ.i.p.al beauty of this drama is the conception of Myrrha.

This young Greek slave, so tender and courageous, in love with her lord and master, yet sighing after her liberty; adoring equally her natal land and the gentle barbarian: what a new and dramatic combination of sentiments! It is in this conflict of emotions that the master's hand shows itself with happiest triumph.

"The heroism of this beautiful Ionian never goes beyond nature, yet stops only at sublimest limits. The proud melancholy that blends with her character, when she thinks of her fatherland; her ardent, generous, _unselfish_ love, her pa.s.sionate desire of elevating the soul of Sardanapalus, so as to justify her devotion to him, the earnest yet sweet severity that reigned over her gentlest qualities, showing her faithful and fearless, capable of sustaining with, a firm hand the torch that was to consume on the sacred pile (according to her religion) both a.s.syrian and Greek; all these combinations are the result of the purest sentiments, the n.o.blest art. The last words of Myrrha on the funereal pyre are in good keeping with the grand conception of her character.

With the natural aspirations of a Greek, her thoughts turn at this moment to her distant clime; but still they come back at the same time to her lord, who is beside her, and blending almost in one sigh the two contrary affections of her soul, Myrrha cries:--

"Then farewell, thou earth!

And loveliest spot of earth! farewell, Ionia!

Be thou still free and beautiful, and far Aloof from desolation! My last prayer Was for thee, my last thoughts, save _one_, were of thee!

_Sar._ And that?

_Myr._ Is yours."

"The princ.i.p.al charm," says Moore, "and the life-giving angel of this tragedy, is Myrrha, a beautiful, heroic, devoted, ethereal creature, enamored of the generous, infatuated monarch, yet ashamed of loving a barbarian, and using all her influence over him to elevate as well as gild his life, and to arm him against the terror of his end. Her voluptuousness is that of the heart, her heroism that of the affections."

Another admirable character, full of Christian beauty, is that of Josephine in "Werner."

"Josephine," said the "Review," when "Werner" appeared, "is a model of real spotless virtue. A true woman in her perfection, not only does she preserve the character of her s.e.x by her general integrity, but she also possesses a wife's tender, sweet, and constant affection. She cherishes and consoles her afflicted husband through all the adversities of his destiny and the consequences of his faults.