"Fare thee well! and if for ever.
Still for ever, fare thee well:
Even though unforgiving, never
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
Would that breast were bared before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o'er thee
Which thou ne'er canst know again:
. . . . . . . .
Both shall live, but every morrow
Wake us from a widow'd bed.
. . . . . . . .
And when thou wouldst solace gather,
When our child's first accents flow,
Wilt thou teach her to say 'Father!'
Though his care she must forego?
When her little hands shall press thee,
When her lip to thine is press'd,
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee,
Think of him thy love had bless'd!
Should her lineaments resemble
Those thou never more may'st see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble
With a pulse yet true to me."
This was to the mother: then, in Childe Harold, he addresses his child:—
"Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
Ada, sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted,—not as now we part,
But with a hope.—
My daughter! with thy name this song begun;
My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end;
I see thee not, I hear thee not, but none
Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend
To whom the shadows of far years extend:
Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold,
My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,
A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.
To aid thy mind's development, to watch
Thy dawn of little joys, to sit and see
Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch
Knowledge of objects,—wonders yet to thee!
To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,
And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,—
This, it should seem, was not reserved for me;
Yet this was in my nature: as it is,
I know not what is there, yet something like to this.
Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,
I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation, and a broken claim:
Though the grave closed between us,—'twere the same,
I know that thou wilt love me; though to drain
My blood from out thy being were an aim,
And an attainment,—all would be in vain,—
Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain.
The child of love, though born in bitterness,
And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire
These were the elements, and thine no less.
As yet such are around thee, but thy fire
Shall be more temper'd, and thy hope far higher.
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,
As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to me."
"Ah!" remarked Madame de Staël (the poor exile who, standing by the Lake of Geneva, sighed for the gutter that ran in the rue du Bac),—"ah! I would not mind being unhappy if I were Lady Byron, to have inspired such lines as those in my husband's brain!"
May be; but Lord Byron and Madame de Staël would have made an extraordinary couple, and no mistake.
Byron was not in such a hurry to travel far afield this time; perhaps he only wanted to stretch the double cord that bound him to England, and not to snap it altogether.
He landed in Belgium, visited the field of Waterloo, still wet with the blood of three nations; sailed down the Rhine and settled for a time on the borders of the Lake of Geneva. Here it was that he met Madame de Staël, who was almost as much of an exile under the Restoration as under the Empire. "My greatest pleasure amidst the magnificent pictures round Lake Geneva was to gaze upon the author of Corinne."
At Diodati, Byron renewed his swimming feat of Abydos by crossing the Lake of Geneva where it is four leagues wide. And it was at Diodati that he wrote the third canto of Childe Harold, The Prisoner of Chillon and Manfred. Goethe in a German journal laid claim to the original idea of Manfred, as though Manfred did not descend as directly from Satan as Faust had from Polichinelle! O thou poor rich man! with all thy European fame and thy world-wide reputation, wouldst thou snatch back the leaf that thy brother-poet so sinfully plucked from thy laurel crown!
Can we not almost hear what D'Alembert said of the author of Zaïre and of the Dictionnaire philosophique:—
"This man is past comprehending! he has fame that would satisfy a million of men, and yet he wants another ha'porth."