336
LARA.
[canto i.
With more capacity for love than Earth
Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth.
His early dreams of good outstripped the truth,[decimal 1]
And troubled Manhood followed baffled Youth;
With thought of years in phantom chase misspent,
And wasted powers for better purpose lent;
And fiery passions that had poured their wrath
In hurried desolation o'er his path,
And left the better feelings all at strife[lower-roman 1]
In wild reflection o'er his stormy life; 330
But haughty still, and loth himself to blame,
He called on Nature's self to share the shame,
And charged all faults upon the fleshly form
She gave to clog the soul, and feast the worm;
Till he at last confounded good and ill,
And half mistook for fate the acts of will:[lower-roman 2][decimal 2]
Too high for common selfishness, he could
At times resign his own for others' good,
But not in pity—not because he ought,
But in some strange perversity of thought, 340
That swayed him onward with a secret pride
To do what few or none would do beside;
And this same impulse would, in tempting time,
Mislead his spirit equally to crime;
Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth.
His early dreams of good outstripped the truth,[decimal 1]
And troubled Manhood followed baffled Youth;
With thought of years in phantom chase misspent,
And wasted powers for better purpose lent;
And fiery passions that had poured their wrath
In hurried desolation o'er his path,
And left the better feelings all at strife[lower-roman 1]
In wild reflection o'er his stormy life; 330
But haughty still, and loth himself to blame,
He called on Nature's self to share the shame,
And charged all faults upon the fleshly form
She gave to clog the soul, and feast the worm;
Till he at last confounded good and ill,
And half mistook for fate the acts of will:[lower-roman 2][decimal 2]
Too high for common selfishness, he could
At times resign his own for others' good,
But not in pity—not because he ought,
But in some strange perversity of thought, 340
That swayed him onward with a secret pride
To do what few or none would do beside;
And this same impulse would, in tempting time,
Mislead his spirit equally to crime;
- ↑ [Compare Coleridge's Lines to a Gentleman [ William Wordsworth] (written in 1807, but not published till 1817), lines 69, 70—"Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain."] - ↑ [For Byron's belief or half-persuasion that he was predestined to evil, compare Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza lxxxiii. lines 8, 9, and note. Compare, too. Canto III. stanza lxx. lines 8 and 9; and Canto IV. stanza xxxiv. line 6: Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 74, 260, 354.]
