free-verse56 lines
Stanzas To Augusta.[n][77]
by George Gordon ByronI.
Though the day of my Destiny's over,
And the star of my Fate hath declined,[o]
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy Soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the Love which my Spirit hath painted[p]
It never hath found but in Thee.
II.
Then when Nature around me is smiling,[78]
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,[q]
Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,[r]
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from Thee.
III.
Though the rock of my last Hope is shivered,[s]
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To Pain - it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemn;
They may torture, but shall not subdue me;
'Tis of Thee that I think - not of them.[t]
IV.
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slandered, thou never couldst shake;[u][79]
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.[v]
V.
Yet I blame not the World, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one;
If my Soul was not fitted to prize it,
'Twas folly not sooner to shun:[80]
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,[w]
It could not deprive me of Thee.
VI.
From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,[x]
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherished
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the Desert a fountain is springing,[y][81]
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of Thee.[82]
July 24, 1816.
[First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816.]