Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/556

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518
PARISINA.

I am no bastard in my soul,
For that, like thine, abhorred control;
And for my breath, that hasty boon
Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon,
I valued it no more than thou,300
When rose thy casque above thy brow,
And we, all side by side, have striven,
And o'er the dead our coursers driven;
The past is nothing—and at last
The future can but be the past;[1]
Yet would I that I then had died:
For though thou work'dst my mother's ill,
And made thy own my destined bride,
I feel thou art my father still:
And harsh as sounds thy hard decree,310
'Tis not unjust, although from thee.
Begot in sin, to die in shame,
My life begun and ends the same:
As erred the sire, so erred the son,
And thou must punish both in one.
My crime seems worst to human view,
But God must judge between us too!"[2]


XIV.

He ceased—and stood with folded arms,
On which the circling fetters sounded;
And not an ear but felt as wounded,320
Of all the chiefs that there were ranked,
When those dull chains in meeting clanked:

Till Parisina's fatal charms[3]
  1. [Lines 304, 305, and lines 310-317 are not in the Copy. They were inserted by Byron in the Revise.]
  2. [A writer in the Critical Review (February, 1816, vol. iii. p. 151) holds this couplet up to derision. "Too" is a weak ending, and, orally at least, ambiguous.]
  3. ["I sent for Marmion ... because it occurred to me there