Lord George Gordon Byron

Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the gazelle's,

Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,

Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,

Glance o'er this page, nor to my verse deny

That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh,

Could I to thee be ever more than friend:

Had sighed to many, though he loved but one,

And that loved one, alas, could ne'er be his.

The horrid crags, by toppling convent crowned,

The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,

The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrowned,

The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,

The tender azure of the unruffled deep,

The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,

The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,

The vine on high, the willow branch below,

Mixed in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.

Teems not each ditty with the glorious tale?

Ah! such, alas, the hero's amplest fate!

When granite moulders and when records fail,

A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.

Pride! bend thine eye from heaven to thine estate,

See how the mighty shrink into a song!

Can volume, pillar, pile, preserve thee great?

Or must thou trust Tradition's simple tongue,

When Flattery sleeps with thee, and History does thee wrong?

Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice;

Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high;

Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies.

The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory!

The foe, the victim, and the fond ally

That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,

Are met—as if at home they could not die—

To feed the crow on Talavera's plain,

And fertilise the field that each pretends to gain.

Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools,

The broken tools, that tyrants cast away

By myriads, when they dare to pave their way

With human hearts—to what?—a dream alone.

Can despots compass aught that hails their sway?

Match me, ye climes! which poets love to laud;

Match me, ye harems! of the land where now

I strike my strain, far distant, to applaud

Beauties that even a cynic must avow!

Match me those houris, whom ye scarce allow

To taste the gale lest Love should ride the wind,

With Spain's dark-glancing daughters—deign to know,

There your wise Prophet's paradise we find,

His black-eyed maids of Heaven, angelically kind.

Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways!

And lately had he learned with truth to deem

Love has no gift so grateful as his wings:

Yet to the beauteous form he was not blind,

Though now it moved him as it moves the wise;