“Farewell! with him alone may rest the _pain_, If such there were—with you, the moral of this strain.”
In the other, where his true character speaks—
“As for the ladies I have nought to say, A wanderer from the British world of fashion, Where I, like other dogs, have had my day, Like other men, too, may have had my passion— But that, like other things, has passed away, And all her fools whom I _could_ lay the lash on, Foes, friends, men, women, now are nought to me But dreams of what has been, no more to be.”
Shall we say that he lies, or that he only writes the first crazy thing that comes uppermost in his brain? I prefer the latter—or both; for they equally prove that he had no positive intent of good. His history, romance, character, all are truthfully told in that one stanza. ’Tis useless to dwell upon it.
That he had his inspirations of religious truth, which are common to all men, one may read abundantly in his works, especially in “Childe Harold.” Poor Byron seemed to grow sober and reflective, as the last Canto waned away. He could see the Almighty’s form glassed in the tempest, calm or convulsed; in its never-ending oscillation, the image of Eternity; in its incomprehensibility, “the throne of the Invisible.” The first time (how melancholy to him must have been the feeling!) that he ever longed to be associated with exalted womanly virtue, was, when in the CXVII. stanza—he breaks forth:
“Ye elements!—in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted—can ye not Accord me such a being?”
And how unmistakably does he not confess himself a stranger to it, as he continues—
“Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.”
Frequently the circumstance of association seemed to be the channel through which the rejected grace of faith was poured upon his soul. As he enters the portals of the church of churches, the mausoleum of the prince of the apostles, his gifted light shines forth—
“But thou, of temples old or altars new, Standest alone—with nothing like to thee— Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.”
This last line seems to belie the opinion that Byron never saw any thing in religion but the poetry of it: it sounds like an involuntary revelation of interior conviction. Again—