Childe Harold's Pilgrimage E-Book

George Byron

• Herausgeber: George Byron
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

“Childe Harold's Pilgrimage” is a lengthy narrative poem written by the English poet Lord Byron, and was published between 1812 and 1818. The poem describes the travels and thoughts of two characters who, disillusioned with a life of idleness and pleasure, seek a new life in foreign lands; altogether, can be interpreted as the expression of the melancholy and disillusionment experienced by a generation exhausted of wars of later age to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. As Byron himself admitted, the poem takes its inspiration from autobiographical stories by the same author, in particular from the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas made between 1809 and 1811.

Leseprobe

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

By

George Byron

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To Ianthe.

Canto the First.

Canto the Second.

Canto the Third.

Canto the Fourth.

To Ianthe. 1

Not in those climes where I have late been straying,

Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,

Not in those visions to the heart displaying

Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,

Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seemed:

Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek

To paint those charms which varied as they beamed —

To such as see thee not my words were weak;

To those who gaze on thee, what language could they speak?

Ah! mayst thou ever be what now thou art,

Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring,

As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,

Love’s image upon earth without his wing,

And guileless beyond Hope’s imagining!

And surely she who now so fondly rears

Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,

Beholds the rainbow of her future years,

Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.

Young Peri of the West! — ’tis well for me

My years already doubly number thine;

My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee,

And safely view thy ripening beauties shine:

Happy, I ne’er shall see them in decline;

Happier, that while all younger hearts shall bleed

Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign

To those whose admiration shall succeed,

But mixed with pangs to Love’s even loveliest hours decreed.

Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the gazelle’s,

Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,

Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,

Glance o’er this page, nor to my verse deny

That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh,

Could I to thee be ever more than friend:

This much, dear maid, accord; nor question why

To one so young my strain I would commend,

But bid me with my wreath one matchless lily blend.

Such is thy name with this my verse entwined;

And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast

On Harold’s page, Ianthe’s here enshrined

Shall thus be first beheld, forgotten last:

My days once numbered, should this homage past

Attract thy fairy fingers near the lyre

Of him who hailed thee, loveliest as thou wast,

Such is the most my memory may desire;

Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require?

1 Lady Charlotte Harley, daughter of the Earl of Oxford.

Canto the First.

i.

Oh, thou, in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,

Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel’s will!

Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,

Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill:

Yet there I’ve wandered by thy vaunted rill;

Yes! sighed o’er Delphi’s long-deserted shrine

Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still;

Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine

To grace so plain a tale — this lowly lay of mine.

ii.

Whilome in Albion’s isle there dwelt a youth,

Who ne in virtue’s ways did take delight;

But spent his days in riot most uncouth,

And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night.

Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,

Sore given to revel and ungodly glee;

Few earthly things found favour in his sight

Save concubines and carnal companie,

And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.

iii.

Childe Harold was he hight:— but whence his name

And lineage long, it suits me not to say;

Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame,

And had been glorious in another day:

But one sad losel soils a name for aye,

However mighty in the olden time;

Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,

Nor florid prose, nor honeyed lines of rhyme,

Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.

iv.

Childe Harold basked him in the noontide sun,

Disporting there like any other fly,

Nor deemed before his little day was done

One blast might chill him into misery.

But long ere scarce a third of his passed by,

Worse than adversity the Childe befell;

He felt the fulness of satiety:

Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,

Which seemed to him more lone than eremite’s sad cell.

v.

For he through Sin’s long labyrinth had run,

Nor made atonement when he did amiss,

Had sighed to many, though he loved but one,

And that loved one, alas, could ne’er be his.