Part 15

Thy husband's blest--and 'twill impart Some pangs to view his happier lot: But let them pass--Oh! how my heart Would hate him, if he loved thee not!

"When late I saw thy favorite child I thought my jealous heart would break; But when the unconscious infant smiled, I kiss'd it for its mother's sake.

"I kiss'd it, and repress'd my sighs Its father in its face to see; But then it had its mother's eyes, And they were all to love and me.

"Mary, adieu! I must away: While thou art blest I'll not repine; But near thee I can never stay: My heart would soon again be thine.

"I deem'd that time, I deem'd that pride Had quench'd at length my boyish flame Nor knew, till seated by thy side, My heart in all, save love, the same.

"Yet I was calm: I knew the time My breast would thrill before thy look; But now to tremble were a crime-- We met, and not a nerve was shook.

"I saw thee gaze upon my face, Yet meet with no confusion there: One only feeling could'st thou trace; The sullen calmness of despair.

"Away! away! my early dream Remembrance never must awake: Oh! where is Lethe's fabled stream? My foolish heart, be still, or break."

The revival of this early passion, and the melancholy associations which it spread over those scenes in the neighborhood of Newstead, which would necessarily be the places of his frequent resort while in England, are alluded to by him as a principal cause of his first departure for the Continent:

"When man expell'd from Eden's bowers A moment lingered near the gate, Each scene recalled the vanish'd hours, And bade him curse his future fate.

"But wandering on through distant climes, He learnt to bear his load of grief; Just gave a sigh to other times, And found in busier scenes relief.

"Thus, Mary, must it be with me, And I must view thy charms no more; For, while I linger near to thee, I sigh for all I knew before."

It was in the subsequent June that he set off on his pilgrimage by sea and land, which was to become the theme of his immortal poem. That the image of Mary Chaworth, as he saw and loved her in the days of his boyhood, followed him to the very shore, is shown in the glowing stanzas addressed to her on the eve of embarkation--

"'Tis done--and shivering in the gale The bark unfurls her snowy sail; And whistling o'er the bending mast, Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast; And I must from this land be gone. Because I cannot love but one.

"And I will cross the whitening foam, And I will seek a foreign home; Till I forget a false fair face, I ne'er shall find a resting place; My own dark thoughts I cannot shun, But ever love, and love but one.

"To think of every early scene, Of what we are, and what we've been, Would whelm some softer hearts with woe-- But mine, alas! has stood the blow; Yet still beats on as it begun, And never truly loves but one.

"And who that dear loved one may be Is not for vulgar eyes to see, And why that early love was cross'd, Thou know'st the best, I feel the most; But few that dwell beneath the sun Have loved so long, and loved but one.

"I've tried another's fetters too, With charms, perchance, as fair to view; And I would fain have loved as well, But some unconquerable spell Forbade my bleeding breast to own A kindred care for aught but one.

"'Twould soothe to take one lingering view, And bless thee in my last adieu; Yet wish I not those eyes to weep For him who wanders o'er the deep; His home, his hope, his youth are gone, Yet still he loves, and loves but one."

The painful interview at Annesley Hall, which revived with such intenseness his early passion, remained stamped upon his memory with singular force, and seems to have survived all his "wandering through distant climes," to which he trusted as an oblivious antidote. Upward of two years after that event, when, having made his famous pilgrimage, he was once more an inmate of Newstead Abbey, his vicinity to Annesley Hall brought the whole scene vividly before him, and he thus recalls it in a poetic epistle to a friend--

"I've seen my bride another's bride,-- Have seen her seated by his side,-- Have seen the infant which she bore, Wear the sweet smile the mother wore, When she and I in youth have smiled As fond and faultless as her child:-- Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain, Ask if I felt no secret pain.

"And I have acted well my part, And made my cheek belie my heart, Returned the freezing glance she gave, Yet felt the while that woman's slave;-- Have kiss'd, as if without design, The babe which ought to have been mine, And show'd, alas! in each caress, Time had not made me love the less."

"It was about the time," says Moore in his life of Lord Byron, "when he was thus bitterly feeling and expressing the blight which his heart had suffered from a real object of affection, that his poems on an imaginary one, 'Thyrza,' were written." He was at the same time grieving over the loss of several of his earliest and dearest friends the companions of his joyous school-boy hours. To recur to the beautiful language of Moore, who writes with the kindred and kindling sympathies of a true poet: "All these recollections of the young and the dead mingled themselves in his mind with the image of her, who, though living, was for him, as much lost as they, and diffused that general feeling of sadness and fondness through his soul, which found a vent in these poems.... It was the blending of the two affections in his memory and imagination, that gave birth to an ideal object combining the best features of both, and drew from him those saddest and tenderest of love poems, in which we find all the depth and intensity of real feeling, touched over with such a light as no reality ever wore."

An early, innocent, and unfortunate passion, however fruitful of pain it may be to the man, is a lasting advantage to the poet. It is a well of sweet and bitter fancies; of refined and gentle sentiments; of elevated and ennobling thoughts; shut up in the deep recesses of the heart, keeping it green amidst the withering blights of the world, and, by its casual gushings and overflowings, recalling at times all the freshness, and innocence, and enthusiasm of youthful days. Lord Byron was conscious of this effect, and purposely cherished and brooded over the remembrance of his early passion, and of all the scenes of Annesley Hall connected with it. It was this remembrance that attuned his mind to some of its most elevated and virtuous strains, and shed an inexpressible grace and pathos over his best productions.

Being thus put upon the traces of this little love-story, I cannot refrain from threading them out, as they appear from time to time in various passages of Lord Byron's works. During his subsequent rambles in the East, when time and distance had softened away his "early romance" almost into the remembrance of a pleasing and tender dream, he received accounts of the object of it, which represented her, still in her paternal Hall, among her native bowers of Annesley, surrounded by a blooming and beautiful family, yet a prey to secret and withering melancholy--

----"In her home, A thousand leagues from his,--her native home, She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy, Daughters and sons of beauty, but--behold! Upon her face there was the tint of grief, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye, As if its lids were charged with unshed tears."

For an instant the buried tenderness of early youth and the fluttering hopes which accompanied it, seemed to have revived in his bosom, and the idea to have flashed upon his mind that his image might be connected with her secret woes--but he rejected the thought almost as soon as formed.

"What could her grief be?--she had all she loved, And he who had so loved her was not there To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish, Or ill repress'd affection, her pure thoughts. What could her grief be?--she had loved him not, Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd Upon her mind--a spectre of the past."