‘“Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
Who mourns o’er hours which we no more shall see,”
do not bear out Byron’s contention to Dallas (Letters, October 14 and 31, 1811) that in these three in memoriam stanzas (IX., XCV., XCVI.) he is bewailing an event which took place after he returned to Newstead.[33] The “more than friend” had “ceased to be” before the “wanderer” returned. It is evident that Byron did not take Dallas into his confidence.’
Assuredly he did not. The ‘more than friend’ was not dead; she had merely absented herself, and did not stay to welcome the ‘wanderer’ on his return from his travels. She was, however, dead to him in a sense far deeper than mere absence at such a time.
‘The absent are the dead—for they are cold,
And ne’er can be what once we did behold.’[34]
Mary Chaworth’s presence would have consoled him at a time when he felt alone in the world. He feared that she was lost to him for ever. He knew her too well to suppose that she could ever be more to him than a friend; and yet it was just that female sympathy and friendship for which he so ardently yearned. In his unreasonableness, he was both hurt and disappointed that this companion of his earlier days should have kept away from her home at that particular time, and of course misconstrued the cause. With the feeling that this parting must be eternal, he wished that they could have met once more.
‘Could this have been—a word, a look,
That softly said, “We part in peace,”
Had taught my bosom how to brook,
With fainter sighs, thy soul’s release.’
In the bitterness of his desolation he recalled the days when they were at Newstead together—probably stolen interviews, which find no place in history—when
‘many a day
In these, to me, deserted towers,
Ere called but for a time away,
Affection’s mingling tears were ours?
Ours, too, the glance none saw beside;
The smile none else might understand;
The whispered thought: the walks aside;
The pressure of the thrilling hand;
The kiss so guiltless and relined,
That Love each warmer wish forbore;
Those eyes proclaimed so pure a mind,
Ev’n Passion blushed to plead for more.
The tone that taught me to rejoice,
When prone, unlike thee, to repine;
The song, celestial from thy voice,
But sweet to me from none but thine;
The pledge we wore—I wear it still,
But where is thine? Ah! where art thou?
Oft have I borne the weight of ill,
But never bent beneath till now!’
Six days after these lines were written Byron left Newstead. Writing to Hodgson from his lodgings in St. James’s Street, he enclosed some stanzas which he had written a day or two before, ‘on hearing a song of former days.’ The lady, whose singing now so deeply impressed Byron, was the Hon. Mrs. George Lamb, whom he had met at Melbourne House.
In this, the second of the ‘Thyrza’ poems, the allusions to Mary Chaworth are even more marked. Byron says the songs of Mrs. George Lamb ‘speak to him of brighter days,’ and that he hopes to hear those strains no more: