File:With Byron in Italy; a selection of the poems and letters of Lord Byron relating to his life in Italy. Edited by Anna Benneson McMahan (1907) (14595423459).jpg

Identifier: withbyroninitaly00byrouoft (find matches)
Title: With Byron in Itlay; a selection of the poems and letters of Lord Byron relating to his life in Italy. Edited by Anna Benneson McMahan
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824 McMahan, Anna (Benneson) 1846-
Subjects:
Publisher: London T.F. Unwin
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
onquerd be,
And Freedom find no champion and no child
Such as Columbia saw arise when she
Sprung forth a Pallas, armd and undented ?
Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,
Deep in the unpruned forest, midst the roar
Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled
On infant Washington? Has Earth no more
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore ?

XCVII

But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,
And fatal have her Saturnalia been
To Freedoms cause, in every age and clime;
Because the deadly days which we have seen,
And vile Ambition, that built up between
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,
And the base pageant last upon the scene,
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall
Which nips lifes tree, and dooms mans worst — his second
fall.

XCVIII

Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind ;
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,T
he loudest still the tempest leaves behind:
[ 84 ]
Tomb of Caecilia Metella on Appian Way
At Rome. Alban Mount in distance

Text Appearing After Image:

" There is a stern round tower of other days,
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army's bafled strength delays,
. . . . . . .
What reasure lay so lock'd, so hid ? A woman's grave. —Childe Harold Canto IV, stanza xcix, page 85."

THE YEARS 1817, 1818, 1819

Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,
Choppd by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
But the sap lasts, — and still the seed we find
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North ;
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.

XCIX

There is a stern round tower of other days,¹
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
Standing with half its battlements alone,
And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
The garland of eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by time overthrown; —
What was this tower of strength ? within its cave
What treasure lay so lock'd, so hid ? A womans grave.

C

But who was she, the lady of the dead,
Tomb'd in a palace ? Was she chaste and fair ?
Worthy a kings — or more — a Romans bed ?
What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear ?
What daughter of her beauties was the heir ?
How lived, how loved, how died she ? Was she not
So honoured— and conspicuously there,

Note About Images