"She cannot step as doth an Arab barb,
Or Andalusian girl from mass returning.
Beauties that need not fear a broken vow.—[MS. erased.]
——a lecher's vow.—[MS.]
[79] [The summit of Parnassus is not visible from Delphi or the neighbourhood. Before he composed "these stanzas" (December 16), (see [note 13.B.]) at the foot of Parnassus, Byron had first surveyed its "snow-clad" majesty as he sailed towards Vostizza (on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth), which he reached on the 5th, and quitted on the 14th of December. "The Echoes" (line 8) which were celebrated by the ancients (Justin, Hist., lib. xxiv. cap. 6), are those made by the Phædriades, or "gleaming peaks," a "lofty precipitous escarpment of red and grey limestone" at the head of the valley of the Pleistus, facing southwards.—Travels in Albania, i. 188, 199; Geography of Greece, by H. F. Tozer, 1873, p. 230.]
[cu] Not in the landscape of a fabled lay.—[MS. D.]
[80] [{61}] ["Upon Parnassus, going to the fountain of Delphi (Castri) in 1809, I saw a flight of twelve eagles (Hobhouse said they were vultures—at least in conversation), and I seized the omen. On the day before, I composed the lines to Parnassus [in Childe Harold] and, on beholding the birds, had a hope that Apollo had accepted my homage. I have, at least, had the name and fame of a poet during the poetical period of life (from twenty to thirty). Whether it will last is another matter; but I have been a votary of the deity and the place, and am grateful for what he has done in my behalf, leaving the future in his hands, as I left the past" (B. Diary, 1821).]
[cv] [{62}] And walks with glassy steps o'er Aganippe's wave.—[MS. erased.]
Let me some remnant of thy Spirit bear
Some glorious thought to my petition grant.—[MS. erased, D.]