XXII.

Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy shore;
Europe and Afric on each other gaze!

Lands of the dark-ey'd Maid and dusky Moor
Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze:
How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,
Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase;
But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown,

From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down.

XXIII.

"Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel

We once have lov'd, though love is at an end:
The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,
Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.
Who with the weight of years would wish to bend,
When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy?
Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend,

Death hath but little left him to destroy!

Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?

XXIV.

Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side,
To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere;

The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride,
And flies unconscious o'er each backward year.
None are so desolate but something dear,
Dearer than self, possesses or possess'd

A thought, and claims the homage of a tear;
A flashing pang! of which the weary breast
Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.

XXV.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,

To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,

And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been;

To climb the trackless mountain all

unseen,

With the wild flock that never needs a fold;

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;

This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and see her stores unroll'd.

XXVI.

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tir'd denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; Minions of splendour shrinking from distress! None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought and sued; This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

XXVII.

Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track
Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;
Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack,
And each well known caprice of wave and wind;
Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find,
Coop'd in their winged sea-girt citadel;

The foul, the fair, the 'contrary, the kind,

As breezes rise and fall and billows swell,

Till on some jocund morn-lo, land! and all is well.

XXVIII.

But not in silence pass Calypso's isles,
The sister tenants of the middle deep;

10

There for the weary still a haven smiles,
Though the fair goddess long hath ceas'd to weep,
And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep
For him who dar'd prefer a mortal bride:
Here, too, his boy essay'd the dreadful leap

Stern Mentor urg'd from high to yonder tide;

While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sigh'd.

XXIX.

Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone:
But trust not this; too easy youth, beware!
A mortal sovereign holds her dangerous throne,
And thou may'st find a new Calypso there.
Sweet Florence! could another ever share
This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine:
But check'd by every tie, I may not dare

To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,

Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.

XXX.

Thus Harold deem'd, as on that lady's eye

He look'd, and met its beam without a thought,
Save Admiration glancing harmless by:

Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote,
Who knew his votary often lost and caught,
But knew him as his worshipper no more,
And ne'er again the boy his bosom sought:
Since now he vainly urg'd him to adore,
Well deem'd the little God his ancient

XXXI.

sway was o'er.

Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze,
One who, 'twas said, still sigh'd to all he saw,
Withstand, unmov'd, the lustre of her gaze,
Which others hail'd with real, or mimic awe,
Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law;
All that gay Beauty from her bondsmen claims:
And much she marvell'd that a youth so raw

Nor felt, nor feign'd at least, the oft-told flames,

Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames.