In the verse ‘Remembrance’ we realize that the dawn of his life is overcast. We see, from some verses written in 1808, how, three years after that marriage, he was still the victim of a fatal infatuation:
‘I deem’d that Time, I deem’d that Pride,
Had quench’d at length my boyish flame;
Nor knew, till seated by thy side,
My heart in all—save hope—the same.’
After lingering for three months in the neighbourhood of the woman whom he so unwisely loved, he finally resolved to break the chain:
‘In flight I shall be surely wise,
Escaping from temptation’s snare;
I cannot view my Paradise
Without the wish of dwelling there.’
When about to leave England, in vain pursuit of the happiness he had lost, he addresses passionate verses to Mary Chaworth:
‘And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.’
He tells her that he has had love passages with another woman, in the vain hope of destroying the love of his life:
‘But some unconquerable spell
Forbade my bleeding breast to own
A kindred care for aught but one.’
He wished to say farewell, but dared not trust himself. In the cantos of ‘Childe Harold,’ written during his absence, he recurs to the subject nearest to his heart. He says that before leaving Newstead—
‘Oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold’s brow,
As if the memory of some deadly feud
Or disappointed passion lurked below:
But this none knew, nor haply cared to know.’