Thus to that heart did his its thoughts in absence pour.—[MS.]
——its absent feelings pour.—[MS. erased.]
[306] [{249}] [Written on the Rhine bank, May 11, 1816.—MS. M.]
[is] [{251}] A sigh for Marceau——.—[MS.]
[307] [Marceau (vide post, [note 2, p. 296]) took part in crushing the Vendean insurrection. If, as General Hoche asserts in his memoirs, six hundred thousand fell in Vendée, Freedom's charter was not easily overstepped.]
[308] [{252}] [Compare Gray's lines in The Fatal Sisters—
"Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darken'd air.">[
[it] And could the sleepless vultures——.—[MS.]
[iu] Rustic not rude, sublime yet not austere.—[MS.]
[309] [Lines 8 and 9 may be cited as a crying instance of Byron's faulty technique. The collocation of "awful" with "austere," followed by "autumn" in the next line, recalls the afflictive assonance of "high Hymettus," which occurs in the beautiful passage which he stole from The Curse of Minerva and prefixed to the third canto of The Corsair. The sense of the passage is that, as in autumn, the golden mean between summer and winter, the year is at its full, so in the varied scenery of the Rhine there is a harmony of opposites, a consummation of beauty.]