Byron: The Last Phase Part 18

The cornelian when found, was returned to Byron, but apparently in a broken condition.

'Ill-fated Heart! and can it be, That thou shouldst thus be rent in twain?'

It was through the depressing influence of solitude that the idea entered Byron's mind to depict his (possibly eternal) separation from Mary Chaworth in terms synonymous with death. With a deep feeling of desolation he recalled every incident of his boyish love. We have seen how the image of his lost Mary, now the wife of his rival, deepened the gloom caused by the sudden death of his mother, and of some of his college friends. It was to Mary, whom he dared not name, that he cried in his agony:

'By many a sh.o.r.e and many a sea Divided, yet beloved in vain; The Past, the Future fled to thee, To bid us meet--no, ne'er again!'

Her absence from Annesley, where he had hoped to find her on his return home, was a great disappointment to him.

'Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!

Whom Youth and Youth's affections bound to me; Who did for me what none beside have done, Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee.

What is my Being! thou hast ceased to be!

Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home, Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall see-- Would they had never been, or were to come!

Would he had ne'er returned to find fresh cause to roam!

'Oh I ever loving, lovely, and beloved!

How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past, And clings to thoughts now better far removed!

But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.

All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast; The Parent, Friend, and now the more than Friend: Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast, And grief with grief continuing still to blend, Hath s.n.a.t.c.h'd the little joy that Life hath yet to lend.

'What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?

What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?

To view each loved one blotted from Life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.

Before the Chastener humbly let me bow, O'er Hearts divided and o'er Hopes destroyed: Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow, Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed, And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloyed.'

These stanzas were attached to the second canto of 'Childe Harold,' after that poem was in the press. Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, who so ably edited the latest edition of the poetry of Byron, states that they were sent to Dallas on the same day that Byron composed the poem 'To Thyrza.'

This is significant, as also his attempt to mystify Dallas by telling him that he had again (October 11, 1811) been shocked by a death. This was true enough, for he had on that day heard of the death of Edleston; but it was _not_ true that the stanzas we have quoted had any connection with that event. Mr. Coleridge in a note says:

'In connection with this subject, it may be noted that the lines 6 and 7 of Stanza XCV.,

'"Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home, Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall see,"

do not bear out Byron's contention to Dallas (Letters, October 14 and 31, 1811) that in these three _in memoriam_ stanzas (IX., XCV., XCVI.) he is bewailing an event which took place _after_ he returned to Newstead.[33] The "more than friend" had "ceased to be" before the "wanderer" returned. It is evident that Byron did not take Dallas into his confidence.'

a.s.suredly he did not. The 'more than friend' was not _dead_; she had merely absented herself, and did not stay to welcome the 'wanderer' on his return from his travels. She was, however, _dead to him_ in a sense far deeper than mere absence at such a time.

'The absent are the dead--for they are cold, And ne'er can be what once we did behold.'[34]

Mary Chaworth's presence would have consoled him at a time when he felt alone in the world. He feared that she was lost to him for ever. He knew her too well to suppose that she could ever be more to him than a friend; and yet it was just that female sympathy and friends.h.i.+p for which he so ardently yearned. In his unreasonableness, he was both hurt and disappointed that this companion of his earlier days should have kept away from her home at that particular time, and of course misconstrued the cause. With the feeling that this parting must be eternal, he wished that they could have met once more.

'Could this have been--a word, a look, That softly said, "We part in peace,"

Had taught my bosom how to brook, With fainter sighs, thy soul's release.'

In the bitterness of his desolation he recalled the days when they were at Newstead together--probably stolen interviews, which find no place in history--when

'many a day In these, to me, deserted towers, Ere called but for a time away, Affection's mingling tears were ours?

Ours, too, the glance none saw beside; The smile none else might understand; The whispered thought: the walks aside; The pressure of the thrilling hand; The kiss so guiltless and relined, That Love each warmer wish forbore; Those eyes proclaimed so pure a mind, Ev'n Pa.s.sion blushed to plead for more.

The tone that taught me to rejoice, When p.r.o.ne, unlike thee, to repine; _The song, celestial from thy voice, But sweet to me from none but thine_; The pledge we wore--_I_ wear it still, But where is thine? Ah! where art thou?

Oft have I borne the weight of ill, But never bent beneath till now!'

Six days after these lines were written Byron left Newstead. Writing to Hodgson from his lodgings in St. James's Street, he enclosed some stanzas which he had written a day or two before, 'on hearing a song of former days.' The lady, whose singing now so deeply impressed Byron, was the Hon.

Mrs. George Lamb, whom he had met at Melbourne House.

In this, the second of the 'Thyrza' poems, the allusions to Mary Chaworth are even more marked. Byron says the songs of Mrs. George Lamb 'speak to him of brighter days,' and that he hopes to hear those strains no more:

'For now, alas!

I must not think, I may not gaze, On what I _am_--on what I _was_.

The voice that made those sounds more sweet Is hush'd, and all their charms are fled.

'On my ear The well-remembered echoes thrill; I hear a voice I would not hear, A voice that now might well be still.

'Sweet Thyrza! waking as in sleep, Thou art but now a lovely dream; _A Star_ that trembled o'er the deep, Then turned from earth its tender beam.

But he who through Life's dreary way Must pa.s.s, when Heaven is veiled in wrath, Will long lament the vanished ray That scattered gladness o'er his path.'

In Byron's imagination Mary Chaworth was always hovering over him like a star. She was the 'starlight of his boyhood,' the 'star of his destiny,'

and three years later the poet, in his unpublished fragment 'Harmodia,'

speaks of Mary as his

'melancholy star Whose tearful beam shoots trembling from afar.'

The third and last of the 'Thyrza' poems must have been written at about the same time as the other two. It appeared with 'Childe Harold' in 1812.

Byron, weary of the gloom of solitude, and tortured by 'pangs that rent his heart in twain,' now determined to break away and seek inspiration for that mental energy which formed part of his nature. Man, he says, was not made to live alone.

'I'll be that light unmeaning thing That smiles with all, and weeps with none.

It was not thus in days more dear, It never would have been, _but thou Hast fled, and left me lonely here_.'

Byron's thoughts went back to the days when he was sailing over the bright waters of the blue aegean, in the _Salsette_ frigate, commanded by 'good old Bathurst'[35]--those halcyon days when he was weaving his visions into stanzas for 'Childe Harold.'

'On many a lone and lovely night It soothed to gaze upon the sky; For then I deemed the heavenly light Shone sweetly on thy pensive eye: And oft I thought at Cynthia's noon, When sailing o'er the aegean wave, "Now Thyrza gazes on that moon"-- Alas! it gleamed upon her grave!

'When stretched on Fever's sleepless bed, And sickness shrunk my throbbing veins, "'Tis comfort still," I faintly said, "That Thyrza cannot know my pains."

Like freedom to the timeworn slave-- A boon 'tis idle then to give-- Relenting Nature vainly gave My life, when Thyrza ceased to live!

'My Thyrza's pledge in better days, _When Love and Life alike were new_!

How different now thou meet'st my gaze!

How tinged by time with Sorrow's hue!

The heart that gave itself with thee Is silent--ah, were mine as still!

Though cold as e'en the dead can be, It feels, it sickens with the chill.'

Byron here suggests that the pledge in question was given with the giver's heart. Lovers are apt to interpret such gifts as 'love-tokens,' without suspicion that they may possibly have been due to a feeling far less flattering to their hopes.

'Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token!