XII.
The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns—N4
An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
Clank over sceptred cities; Nations melt
From Power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
The sunshine for a while, and downward go
Like Lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt;
Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo![1]N5
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.[2][3]
- ↑ ["Oh, for one hour of Dundee!" was the exclamation of a Highland chieftain at the battle of Sheriff-muir, November 13, 1715 (Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, III. Series, chap. x.; Prose Works, Paris, 1830, vii. 768). Wordsworth makes the words his own in the sonnet, "In the Pass of Killicranky (an Invasion being expected, October, 1803)" (Works, 1888, p. 201)—
"O for a single hour of that Dundee,
Who on that day the word of onset gave!"And Coleridge, in a letter to Wordsworth (February 8, 1804), thinking, perhaps, less of the chieftain than the sonnet, exclaims, "'Oh for one hour of Dundee!' How often shall I sigh, 'Oh for one hour of The Recluse!'"—an aspiration which Byron would have worded differently.]
- ↑ ——who quelled the imperial foe.—[MS. M. erased.]
——empire's all-conquering foe.—[MS. M.] - ↑ [Compare Marino Faliero, act iv. sc. 2, lines 157, 158—
"Doge Dandolo survived to ninety summers,
To vanquish empires, and refuse their crown.""The vessels that bore the bishops of Soissons and
by Godfrey of Viterbo, an attendant on the Emperor. So great was the press in the market that the aged Pope was thrown down—
"Jam Papa perisset in arto,
Cæsar ibi vetulum ni relevasset eum."
"This," he remarks, "is an odd contrast of real life with romance."]
