Michael Peverett: Five stanzas of <em>Childe Harold</em>

Saturday, August 17, 2024

Five stanzas of Childe Harold

CLXXI.

Woe unto us, not her ; for she sleeps well :
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung
Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung
Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,—

CLXXII.

These might have been her destiny ; but no,
Our hearts deny it : and so young, so fair,
Good without effort, great without a foe ;
But now a bride and mother—and now there !

How many ties did that stern moment tear !
From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast
Is linked the electric chain of that despair,
Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppressed
The land which loved thee so, that none could love thee best.

CLXXIII.

Lo, Nemi ! navelled in the woody hills
So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
And, calm as cherished hate, its surface wears
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

CLXXIV.

And near Albano's scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley ;—and afar

The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
'Arms and the Man,' whose reascending star
Rose o'er an empire ;—but beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome ;—and where yon bar
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight,
The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's delight.

CLXXV.

But I forget.—My pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part,—so let it be,—
His task and mine alike are nearly done ;
Yet once more let us look upon the sea :
The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold
Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled

CLXXVI.

Upon the blue Symplegades : long years— ...

(Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto IV (written 1817, published 1818), Stanzas 171-176)

171.1 her . Princess Charlotte, in line to the throne, whose death in childbirth, aged 21, on 6 November 1817, led to a national outpouring of grief. Byron and Hobhouse heard about it on 23 November, while riding on the Lido in Venice; and, anti-monarchists as they were, were as shocked as other British subjects. Their general view of sovereigns was similar to what many of us think today about big businesses: that they're all, essentially, criminal enterprises. But (also like many of us today) they had no particular idea of what to do about it. And they were easily inconsistent; much of Canto IV seems to honour old despotisms while pouring scorn on new ones. These contradictory feelings are apparent in the lines about Princess Charlotte. (They must have been a late addition to a poem whose first draft had been completed at the end of July.)

171.5-6. till the o'erstrung Nations have armed in madness . Byron was writing this off the back of twenty-five years of war in western Europe. But it still feels quite apposite.

171.8 blind omnipotence . Not literally omnipotence, but the staggering amount of power invested in a single person that ought, you might imagine, be insurance against disaster. And yet it isn't. One reason being that consciousness of great power seems to induce a more than usual absence of common sense, which is where the blindness comes in.

172.3 great without a foe . Byron acknowledging that "greatness" tends to be attributed in circumstances of adversity and conflict. His poetry is looking around for a better way of conceiving greatness.

172.4 But now a bride and mother—and now there ! . Charlotte had been married for a year and a half. She became a mother (to a stillborn son) just hours before she died. "There" is the "abyss" of stanza 167.

172.6 thy Sire . The Prince Regent, who would become George IV in 1820. Byron refers to Britons as "his" subjects because he was the acting monarch (George III having been permanently mad since 1810).

172.7 electric chain . The phrase sounds a bit odd today, but metal chains were often used in early electricity experiments. See e.g. accounts of Galvani's contracting frog's legs, which Mary Shelley knew all about. But maybe Byron was thinking more of a human chain, like those in the Abbé Nollet's sensational demonstrations at Versailles (1746), where a hundred people holding hands received a near-simultaneous shock that made them leap into the air.

173.1 Nemi . The Lago di Nemi is a lake set in an ancient crater surrounded by woods. For near on a hundred stanzas we've been in Rome, but now the poem has leapt without warning into the countryside: the area known as the Alban Hills, about 20 miles to the SE. It was a well-established part of the Grand Tour: Addison wrote about it, e.g.:

In our Excursion to Albano we went as far as Nemi, that takes its Name from the Nemus Dianae. The whole Country thereabouts is still over-run with Woods and Thickets. The Lake of Nemi lyes in a very deep Bottom, so surrounded on all Sides with Mountains and Groves, that the Surface of it is never ruffled with the least Breath of Wind, which perhaps, together with the Clearness of its Waters, gave it formerly the Name of Diana's Looking-Glass.

—Speculumque Dianae.
Virg.

(Joseph Addison, Remarks on several parts of Italy, &c. in the years 1701, 1702, 1703.)

173.7 calm as cherished hate . One of Byron's unexpected analogies, and a reminder that his poetry is usually thinking about several different things at once. The hate that Byron attracted in England, and cordially returned, though he tried not to, was a topic that came up earlier in this canto (e.g. stanzas 133-137). As for the beautiful lake, secure from the ocean buffeting that Byron so revelled in, it briefly takes on a sinister aspect: a cold heart, an enemy you can't touch.

174.1 Albano . Another crater lake, very near to Nemi ("scarce divided"). This is not apparent when beside the lakes, only from above: a first hint of where Byron is standing. It's worth jumping on Google Maps at this point!

174.3 Tiber . On the north-western horizon the course of the Tiber runs through Rome to the sea at Ostia.

174.4 The Latian coast . On the western horizon: a part of the Tyrrhenian coast that was the setting for much of the Aeneid, its first line quoted here. (Aeneas is the "Man" whose star, after the fall of Troy, eventually reascended when he established a new homeland, later to become an empire.)

174.6-7. but beneath thy right Tully reposed from Rome . There are various places which claim to be the site of a Ciceronian villa; Byron is talking about Grottaferrata. (There is no trace of a villa there, but the abbey might overlie it.) The word "but" marks the jump from Rome's distant origins to the time of Cicero ("Tully") and a Roman civilization so bustling you might want to get away from it sometimes. If Byron (and the reader) are looking directly at the Latian coast, then Grottaferrata is precisely "beneath thy right", about three miles away.

174.9 The Sabine farm . The "weary bard" is Horace. Byron's farewell to Horace "whom I hated so" in stanza 77 proved premature; in fact the new satiric manner of Beppo and Don Juan brought Horace back into Byron's thoughts. His Sabine farm (or villa) was at Licenza, in the hills NE of Rome... some 30 miles, as the crow flies, from the viewer's current location. (But Byron did go to Licenza (letter to John Murray, 4 June 1817).)

175.1 But I forget.—My pilgrim's shrine is won . Refers back to stanza 164, where the pilgrim's wanderings are said to be done. (This led to thoughts of fame, oblivion and death, hence the "abyss" which supplied a cue for Byron’s lines about Princess Charlotte.) The pilgrim, of course, is Childe Harold, the now-spectral figure who in Canto IV is only mentioned when being finally ushered from the scene.

The idea of a poem ending with pilgrims reaching a shrine vaguely recalls The Canterbury Tales (at least in its putatively adjusted scheme). But where or what is this shrine that Childe Harold has "won" (i.e. arrived at)? I suppose Byron could mean St Peter's in Rome (stanzas 153-159). At a deeper level, Childe Harold's pilgrimage is over when the poet himself attains psychic congruence and no longer needs his doppelganger.

175.4 Yet once more let us look upon the sea . Initiating the final movement of the poem, a celebration of the sea and of Byron swimming in its waves: "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!" (179).

175.6 the Alban mount . After three stanzas of views Byron finally tells us where we're standing: on the summit of Monte Albano, more commonly called Monte Cavo, "the dominant peak of the Alban Hills" (Wikipedia). In the poem this exultant glimpse of a wider world springs forth without warning after a lengthy scrutiny of Rome and its antiquities. In reality, during his visit to Rome in April-May 1817 Byron took frequent rides out of the city, including to here (letter to John Murray, 9 May 1817 [PDF]).

The westward view from Monte Albano (Cavo). The crater lakes of Nemi (left) and Albano (right). In the distance, the "Latian coast" and the Mediterranean sea.

[Image source: https://meeters.org/event/monte-cavo-escursione-occhialone-via-sacra?date=&category=experience .]

175.8 Calpe's rock . Not the Peñon d'Ifach at Calpe on the Costa Blanca, but an old name for the Rock of Gibraltar, past which Childe Harold is shown entering the Mediterranean in Canto II stanza 22. (But Byron himself only ever passed it in a westerly direction.)

175.9 dark Euxine . The Black Sea. The Greek name means "hospitable"; apparently an irony.

176.1 Upon the blue Symplegades . The Symplegades were the clashing rocks negotiated by Jason; basically legendary, though subsequently identified with real rocky islets in the strait. They acquired the epithet "blue" in Latin literature (Cyaneae Insulae). Byron implies that they're now submerged.

Specimen of an annotated Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, based on just five of its 500 stanzas. (I've no intention of doing any more!)

A couple of months ago I was in Hastings Old Town and treated myself to a book, this slim pocket volume of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a poem I'd never read.

Cassell's National Library was 209 volumes published weekly from 1886 to 1889. They were some of the earliest paperbacks, but were also published clothbound, like this one.

There are amusing adverts in the end-papers, but when we get to the poem the format is attractively uncluttered, about three stanzas on each page, and there are no notes. Even the first editions had Byron's own notes.

Anyway, I found the attractive absence of notes stimulated me to do my own scraping about to understand Byron's many allusions.

The extract I chose for my sample comes from near the end of the elongated final Canto (IV), at a point where the reader who has dutifully gone through the whole poem may well be struggling to concentrate (which was definitely my own experience). It felt good to put these easily overlooked lines in the spotlight, even if I was the only person in the audience.

No need to introduce Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Peter Cochran's lively editions are available as PDFs -- my grateful debts will be apparent.

Cantos I and II (1812):

https://petercochran.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/chp123.pdf

Canto III (1816):

https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/childe_harold_31.pdf

Canto IV (1818):

https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/chp4.pdf

roll on thou grate and restless ocean roll over the LOT", says molesworth in Whizz for Atomms (Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, 1956). Our schoolboy hero perceives that Childe Harold's jejune nihilism continues to underlie Byron's celebration of the sea, and he eagerly adopts it for young Elizabethans of the atomic age. (But he dispenses with the Mediterranean dark blue; this "ocean" sounds more like the sea on a grey day in Margate.)