Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/80

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
50
POEMS OF JULY—SEPTEMBER, 1816.

Which for its pleasure doth create[1]
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:[2]
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,[3]
But would not to appease him tell;30
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.


III.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,[4]
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,40
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit:
  1. [Compare—

    "The maker—call him
    Which name thou wilt; he makes but to destroy."

    Cain, act i. sc. 1.

    Compare, too—

    "And the Omnipotent, who makes and crushes."

    Heaven and Earth, Part I. sc 3.]
  2. [Compare—

    Ὅτῳ θανεῖν μέν ἐστιν οὐ πεπρωμένον.

    P. V., line 754.]
  3. [Compare—

    ...πάντα προὐξεπίσταμαι
    Σκεθρῶς τά μέλλοντα.

    Ibid., lines 101, 102.]
  4. [Compare—

    Θνητοῖς δ' ἀρήγων αὐτὸς εὑρόμην πόνους.

    Ibid., line 269.]