Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Lord Byron (1788–1824). Poetry of Byron. 1881.

III. Dramatic

The Witch of the Alps

IT is not noon—the sunbow’s rays still arch

The torrent with the many hues of heaven,

And roll the sheeted silver’s waving column

O’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular,

And fling its lines of foaming light along,

And to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail,

The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death,

As told in the Apocalypse. No eyes

But mine now drink this sight of loveliness;

I should be sole in this sweet solitude,

And with the Spirit of the place divide

The homage of these waters.—I will call her.

Beautiful Spirit! with thy hair of light,

And dazzling eyes of glory, in whose form

The charms of earth’s least mortal daughters grow

To an unearthly stature, in an essence

Of purer elements; while the hues of youth,—

Carnation’d like a sleeping infant’s cheek,

Rock’d by the beating of her mother’s heart,

Or the rose tints, which summer’s twilight leaves

Upon the lofty glacier’s virgin snow,

The blush of earth embracing with her heaven,—

Tinge thy celestial aspect, and make tame

The beauties of the sunbow which bends o’er thee.

Beautiful Spirit! in thy calm clear brow,

Wherein is glass’d serenity of soul,

Which of itself shows immortality,

I read that thou wilt pardon to a Son

Of Earth, whom the abstruser powers permit

At times to commune with them—if that he

Avail him of his spells—to call thee thus,

And gaze on thee a moment.
Witch.Son of Earth!

I know thee, and the powers which give thee power;

I know thee for a man of many thoughts,

And deeds of good and ill, extreme in both,

Fatal and fated in thy sufferings.

I have expected this—what would’st thou with me?

Man.To look upon thy beauty—nothing further.

The face of the earth hath madden’d me, and I

Take refuge in her mysteries, and pierce

To the abodes of those who govern her—

But they can nothing aid me. I have sought

From them what they could not bestow, and now

I search no further.

Witch.What could be the quest

Which is not in the power of the most powerful,

The rulers of the invisible?
Man.A boon;

But why should I repeat it? ’twere in vain.

Witch.I know not that; let thy lips utter it.

Man.Well, though it torture me, ’tis but the same;

My pang shall find a voice. From my youth upwards

My spirit 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;

My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,

Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,

I had no sympathy with breathing flesh,

Nor midst the creatures of clay that girded me

Was there but one who——but of her anon.

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

I held but slight communion; but instead,

My joy was in the Wilderness, to breathe

The difficult air of the iced mountain’s top,

Where the birds dare not build, nor insect’s wing

Flit o’er the herbless granite; or to plunge

Into the torrent, and to roll along

On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave

Of river-stream, or ocean, in their flow.

In these my early strength exulted; or

To follow through the night the moving moon,

The stars and their development; or catch

The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim;

Or to look, list’ning, on the scatter’d 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. And then I dived,

In my lone wanderings, to the caves of death,

Searching its cause in its effect; and drew

From wither’d bones, and skulls, and heap’d up dust,

Conclusions most forbidden. Then I pass’d

The nights of years in sciences untaught,

Save in the old time; and with time and toil,

And terrible ordeal, and such penance

As in itself hath power upon the air,

And spirits that do compass air and earth,

Space, and the peopled infinite, I made

Mine eyes familiar with Eternity,

Such as, before me, did the Magi, and

He who from out their fountain-dwellings raised

Eros and Anteros, at Gadara,

As I do thee;—and with my knowledge grew

The thirst of knowledge, and the power and joy

Of this most bright intelligence, until—

Witch.Proceed.
Man.Oh! I but thus prolong’d my words,

Boasting these idle attributes, because

As I approach the core of my heart’s grief—

But to my task. 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——
Witch.Spare not thyself—proceed.

Man.She was like me in lineaments—her eyes,

Her hair, her features, all, to the very tone

Even of her voice, they said were like to mine;

But soften’d all, and temper’d into beauty;

She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,

The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind

To comprehend the universe: nor these

Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine,

Pity, and smiles, and tears—which I had not;

And tenderness—but that I had for her;

Humility—and that I never had.

Her faults were mine—her virtues were her own—

I loved her, and destroy’d her!
Witch.With thy hand?

Man.Not with my hand, but heart—which broke her heart—

It gazed on mine, and wither’d. I have shed

Blood, but not hers—and yet her blood was shed—

I saw—and could not stanch it.
Witch.And for this—

A being of the race thou dost despise,

The order which thine own would rise above,

Mingling with us and ours, thou dost forego

The gifts of our great knowledge, and shrink’st back

To recreant mortality——Away!

Man.Daughter of Air! I tell thee, since that hour—

But words are breath—look on me in my sleep,

Or watch my watchings—Come and sit by me!

My solitude is solitude no more,

But peopled with the Furies;—I have gnash’d

My teeth in darkness till returning morn,

Then cursed myself till sunset;—I have pray’d

For madness as a blessing—’tis denied me.

I have affronted death—but in the war

Of elements the waters shrunk from me,

And fatal things pass’d harmless—the cold hand

Of an all-pitiless demon held me back,

Back by a single hair, which would not break.

In fantasy, imagination, all

The affluence of my soul—which one day was

A Crœsus in creation—I plunged deep,

But, like an ebbing wave, it dash’d me back

Into the gulf of my unfathom’d thought.

I plunged amidst mankind—Forgetfulness

I sought in all, save where ’tis to be found,

And that I have to learn;—my sciences,

My long-pursued and superhuman art,

Is mortal here—I dwell in my despair—

And live—and live for ever.
Witch.It may be

That I can aid thee.

Man.To do this thy power

Must wake the dead, or lay me low with them.

Do so—in any shape—in any hour—

With any torture—so it be the last.

Witch.That is not in my province; but if thou

Wilt swear obedience to my will, and do

My bidding, it may help thee to thy wishes.

Man.I will not swear—Obey! and whom? the spirits

Whose presence I command, and be the slave

Of those who served me—Never!
Witch.Is this all?

Hast thou no gentler answer?—Yet bethink thee,

And pause ere thou rejectest.
Man.I have said it.

Witch.Enough!—I may retire then—say!
Man.Retire!

Man. (alone.)We are the fools of time and terror: Days

Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live,

Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.

In all the days of this detested yoke—

This vital weight upon the struggling heart,

Which sinks with sorrow, or beats quick with pain,

Or joy that ends in agony or faintness—

In all the days of past and future, for

In life there is no present, we can number

How few—how less than few—wherein the soul

Forbears to pant for death, and yet draws back

As from a stream in winter, though the chill

Be but a moment’s. I have one resource

Still in my science—I can call the dead,

And ask them what it is we dread to be:

The sternest answer can but be the Grave,

And that is nothing;—if they answer not—

The buried Prophet answered to the Hag

Of Endor; and the Spartan Monarch drew

From the Byzantine maid’s unsleeping spirit

An answer and his destiny—he slew

That which he loved, unknowing what he slew,

And died unpardon’d—though he call’d in aid

The Phyxian Jove, and in Phigalia roused

The Arcadian Evocators to compel

The indignant shadow to depose her wrath,

Or fix her term of vengeance—she replied

In words of dubious import, but fulfill’d.

If I had never lived, that which I love

Had still been living; had I never loved,

That which I love would still be beautiful—

Happy and giving happiness. What is she?

What is she now?—a sufferer for my sins—

A thing I dare not think upon—or nothing.

Within few hours I shall not call in vain—

Yet in this hour I dread the thing I dare:

Until this hour I never shrunk to gaze

On spirit, good or evil—now I tremble,

And feel a strange cold thaw upon my heart.

But I can act even what I most abhor,

And champion human fears.—The night approaches.