That knows his rider.[1] Welcome to their roar!
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!
Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed,
And the rent canvass fluttering strew the gale,[2]
Still must I on; for I am as a weed,
Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.
III.
In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;[3]
Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
- ↑ [Compare The Two Noble Kinsmen (now attributed to Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Massinger), act ii. sc. 1, lines 73, seq.—
"Oh, never
Shall we two exercise like twins of Honour
Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses
Like proud seas under us.""Out of this somewhat forced simile," says the editor (John Wright) of Lord Byron's Poetical Works, issued in 1832, "by a judicious transposition of the comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite waves for seas, Lord Byron's clear and noble thought has been produced." But the literary artifice, if such there be, is subordinate to the emotion of the writer. It is in movement, progress, flight, that the sufferer experiences a relief from the poignancy of his anguish.]
- ↑ And the rent canvass tattering——.—[C.]
- ↑ ["The metaphor is derived from a torrent-bed, which, when dried up, serves for a sandy or shingly path."—Note by H. F. Tozer, Childe Harold, 1885, p. 257. Or, perhaps, the imagery has been suggested by the action of a flood, which ploughs a channel for itself through fruitful soil, and, when the waters are spent, leaves behind it "a sterile track," which does, indeed, permit the traveller to survey the desolation, but serves no other purpose of use or beauty.]
