‘I’ve seen my bride another’s bride—
Have seen her seated by his side—
Have seen the infant which she bore
Wear the sweet smile the mother wore,
When she and I in youth have smiled
As fond and faultless as her child;
Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain,
Ask if I felt no secret pain.
And I have acted well my part,
And made my cheek belie my heart,
Returned the freezing glance she gave,
Yet felt the while that woman’s slave;
Have kissed, as if without design,
The babe which ought to have been mine,
And showed, alas! in each caress
Time had not made me love the less.’
Moore, who knew more of the inner workings of Byron’s mind in later years than anyone else, has told us that the poems addressed to ‘Thyrza’ were merely ‘the abstract spirit of many griefs,’ and that the pseudonym was given to an ‘object of affection’ to whom he poured out the sorrows of his heart.
‘All these recollections,’ says Moore, ‘of the young and dead now came to mingle themselves in his mind with the image of her who, though living, was for him as much lost as they, and diffused that general feeling of sadness and fondness through his soul, which found a vent in these poems. No friendship, however warm, could have inspired sorrow so passionate; as no love, however pure, could have kept passion so chastened.
‘It was the blending of the two affections in his memory and imagination that thus gave birth to an ideal object combining the best features of both, and drew from him these saddest and tenderest of love-poems, in which we find all the depth and intensity of real feeling, touched over with such a light as no reality ever wore.’
Moore here expresses himself guardedly. He was one of the very few who knew the whole story of Mary Chaworth’s associations with Byron. He could not, of course, betray his full knowledge; but he has made it sufficiently clear that Byron, in writing the ‘Thyrza’ group of poems, was merely strewing the flowers of poetry on the grave of his love for Mary Chaworth.
The first of these poems was written on the day on which he heard of the death of Edleston. In a letter to Dallas he says:
‘I have been again shocked by a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times. I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am indeed very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility.’[32]
Shortly after this letter was written Byron visited Cambridge, where, among the many memories which that place awakened, a remembrance of the young chorister and their ardent friendship was most vivid. Byron recollected the Cornelian that Edleston gave him as a token of friendship, and, now that the giver had passed away for ever, he regretted that he had parted with it. The following letter to Mrs. Pigot explains itself:
‘Cambridge,
‘October 28, 1811.
‘Dear Madam,