XXXIII.
Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers,
And shining in the brawling brook, where-by,
Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours
With a calm languor, which, though to the eye
Idlesse it seem, hath its morality—
If from society we learn to live,[1]
'Tis Solitude should teach us how to die;
It hath no flatterers—Vanity can give
No hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive:[2]
XXXIV.
Or, it may be, with Demons,[3] who impair
- ↑ Society's the school where taught to live.—[MS. M. erased.]
- ↑ ——the soul with God must strive.—[MS. M. erased.]
- ↑ The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude. ["He always chose to have company with him, if it were only a child; for he loved children, and took pleasure in talking with those that had been well trained" (Life of John Locke, by H. R. Fox-Bourne, ii. 537). Lady Masham's daughter Esther, and "his wife" Betty Clarke, aged eleven years, were among his child-friends.]
delectabilem et honestam struxi ... hic quanquam æger corpore, tranquillus animo frater dego, sine tumultibus, sine erroribus, sine curis, legens semper et scribens, Deum laudans."—Petrarca, Epistolæ Seniles, xiv. 6 (Opera, Basileæ, 1581, p. 938).
See, too, the notes to Arquà (Rogers's Italy: Poems, 1852, ii. 105-109), which record the pilgrimage of other poets, Boccaccio and Alfieri, to the great laureate's tomb; and compare with Byron's stanzas the whole of that exquisite cameo, delicate and yet durable as if graved on chalcedony.]
