324
LARA.
[CANTO I.
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord,
The long self-exiled Chieftain, is restored:
There be bright faces in the busy hall,
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;
Far checkering o'er the pictured window, plays
The unwonted faggot's hospitable blaze;
And gay retainers gather round the hearth,
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth. 10
The long self-exiled Chieftain, is restored:
There be bright faces in the busy hall,
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;
Far checkering o'er the pictured window, plays
The unwonted faggot's hospitable blaze;
And gay retainers gather round the hearth,
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth. 10
II.
The Chief of Lara is returned again:
And why had Lara crossed the bounding main?
Left by his Sire, too young such loss to know,[decimal 1]
Lord of himself,—that heritage of woe.
That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest!—
With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime;
Then, when he most required commandment, then
Had Lara's daring boyhood governed men.[lower-roman 1] 20
It skills not, boots not step by step to trace
His youth through all the mazes of its race;
The Chief of Lara is returned again:
And why had Lara crossed the bounding main?
Left by his Sire, too young such loss to know,[decimal 1]
Lord of himself,—that heritage of woe.
That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest!—
With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime;
Then, when he most required commandment, then
Had Lara's daring boyhood governed men.[lower-roman 1] 20
It skills not, boots not step by step to trace
His youth through all the mazes of its race;
- ↑ First in each folly—nor the last in vice.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ Compare Childish Recollections, lines 221-224—"Can Rank, or e'en a Guardian's name supply
The love, which glistens in a Father's eye?
For this, can Wealth, or Title's sound atone,
Made, by a Parent's early loss, my own?"Compare, too, English Bards, etc., lines 689-694, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 95. 352.]
were never vassals of the soil, has nevertheless been employed to designate the followers of our fictitious chieftain.
[Byron, writing to Murray, July 14, 1814, says, "The name only is Spanish; the country is not Spain, but the Moon" (not "Morea," as hitherto printed),—Letters, 1899, iii. 110. The MS. is dated May 15, 1814.]
[For the opening lines to Lara, see Murray's Magazine, January, 1887, vol. i. p. 3.]
