Quivi si forma quel soave riso,
Ch’ apre a sua porta in terra il paradiso.”
A perfect Paradise of material delights must have been Tasso’s garden of Armida, in the XV. Canto of the Jerusalem. Yet in these things does Byron so often approach to the rivalry of Tasso and Ariosto, both in his appreciation of sensual beauty, and in his grace of diction, that this alone, in many minds, would have stamped him as a great poet. Nevertheless, when other natures step in to judgment, they behold him at times glorying in the midst of an Alpine storm, exulting in the lightning, muttering, tone for tone, the loud crash of thunder; rejoicing and abroad upon the night like a fierce passion let loose, breathing life and soul and the voice of loud defiance, into the solid mountains.
“O night,
And storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along
From peak to peak the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,