The Mayor and Corporation of Nottingham now joined the funeral procession. Mr. Hobhouse, who attended, tells us that the cortège extended about a quarter of a mile, and, moving very slowly, was five hours on the road to Hucknall-Torkard.
‘The view of it as it wound through the villages of Papplewick and Lindlay excited sensations in me which will never be forgotten. As we passed under the Hill of Annesley, “crowned with the peculiar diadem of trees” immortalized by Byron, I called to mind a thousand particulars of my first visit to Newstead. It was dining at Annesley Park that I saw the first interview of Byron, after a long interval, with his early love, Mary Anne Chaworth.
‘The churchyard and the little church of Hucknall were so crowded that it was with difficulty we could follow the coffin up the aisle. The contrast between the gorgeous decorations of the coffin and the urn, and the humble village church, was very striking. I was told afterwards that the place was crowded until a late hour in the evening, and that the vault was not closed until the next morning.
‘I should mention that I thought Lady Byron ought to be consulted respecting the funeral of her husband; and I advised Mrs. Leigh to write to her, and ask what her wishes might be. Her answer was, if the deceased had left no instructions, she thought the matter might be left to the judgment of Mr. Hobhouse. There was a postscript, saying, “If you like you may show this.”’
Hobhouse concludes his account with these words:
‘I was present at the marriage of this lady with my friend, and handed her into the carriage which took the bride and bridegroom away. Shaking hands with Lady Byron, I wished her all happiness. Her answer was: “If I am not happy, it will be my own fault.”’
PART II
WHAT THE POEMS REVEAL
‘Intesi, che a cosi fatto tormento
Enno dannati i peccator carnali
Che la ragion sommettono al talento.’
Inferno, Canto V., 37-39.
WHAT THE POEMS REVEAL
‘Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even be it against his will.’ – Goethe.
Lady Byron has expressed her opinion that almost every incident in Byron’s poems was drawn from his personal experience. In a letter to Lady Anne Barnard, written two years after the separation, she says:
‘In regard to [Byron’s] poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject with which his own character and interests are not identified; but by the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time, he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable except to a very few.’
Byron himself has told us in ‘Don Juan’ that his music ‘has some mystic diapasons, with much which could not be appreciated in any manner by the uninitiated.’ In a letter to John Murray (August 23, 1821), he says: ‘Almost all “Don Juan” is real life, either my own or from people I knew.’
It is no exaggeration to say that in Byron’s poems some of the mysterious incidents in his life are plainly revealed. For example, ‘Childe Harold,’ ‘The Giaour,’ ‘The Bride of Abydos,’ ‘The Corsair,’ ‘Lara,’ ‘The Dream,’ ‘Manfred,’ ‘Don Juan,’ and several of the smaller pieces, all disclose episodes connected with his own personal experience. In the so-called ‘Fugitive Pieces’ we get a glimpse of his school life and friendships; his pursuits during the time that he resided with his mother at Southwell; and his introduction to Cambridge. In the ‘Hours of Idleness’ we are introduced to Mary Chaworth, after her marriage and the ruin of his hopes.
In the verse ‘Remembrance’ we realize that the dawn of his life is overcast. We see, from some verses written in 1808, how, three years after that marriage, he was still the victim of a fatal infatuation:
‘I deem’d that Time, I deem’d that Pride,
Had quench’d at length my boyish flame;
Nor knew, till seated by thy side,
My heart in all – save hope – the same.’
After lingering for three months in the neighbourhood of the woman whom he so unwisely loved, he finally resolved to break the chain:
‘In flight I shall be surely wise,
Escaping from temptation’s snare;
I cannot view my Paradise
Without the wish of dwelling there.’
When about to leave England, in vain pursuit of the happiness he had lost, he addresses passionate verses to Mary Chaworth:
‘And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.’
He tells her that he has had love passages with another woman, in the vain hope of destroying the love of his life:
‘But some unconquerable spell
Forbade my bleeding breast to own
A kindred care for aught but one.’
He wished to say farewell, but dared not trust himself. In the cantos of ‘Childe Harold,’ written during his absence, he recurs to the subject nearest to his heart. He says that before leaving Newstead —
‘Oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold’s brow,
As if the memory of some deadly feud
Or disappointed passion lurked below:
But this none knew, nor haply cared to know.’
He mentions his mother, from whom he dreaded to part, and his sister Augusta, whom he loved, but had not seen for some time. After his return to England in 1811, he wrote the ‘Thyrza’ poems, and added some stanzas to ‘Childe Harold,’ wherein he expresses a hope that the separation between himself and Mary Chaworth may not be eternal. He then pours out the sorrows of his heart to Francis Hodgson. We cannot doubt that the ‘Lines written beneath a Picture,’ composed at Athens in January, 1811,
‘Dear object of defeated care!
Though now of Love and thee bereft,’
referred to Mary Chaworth, for he mentions the deathblow of his hope. In the ‘Epistle to a Friend,’ Byron mentions the effect which a chance meeting with Mary had upon him, causing him to realize that ‘Time had not made him love the less.’
The poems that have puzzled the commentator most were those which Byron addressed to ‘Thyrza’ – a mysterious personage, whose identity has not hitherto been discovered. The present writer proposes to enter fully, and, he hopes, impartially, into the subject, trusting that the conclusions at which he has arrived may ultimately be endorsed by others who have given their serious attention to the question at issue.
In any attempt to unravel the mystery of the ‘Thyrza’ poems, it will be necessary to consider, not only the circumstances in which they were written, but also those associations of Byron’s youth which inspired a love that endured throughout his life.
Byron’s attachment to his distant cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth, is well known. We know that his boyish love was not returned, and that the young heiress of Annesley married, in 1805, Mr. John Musters, of Colwick, in the neighbourhood of Nottingham. In order to account for these love-poems, it has been suggested that, subsequent to this marriage, Byron fell in love with some incognita, whose identity has never been established, and who died soon after his return to England in 1811.
We are unable to concur with so simple a solution of the mystery, for the following reasons: It will be remembered that shortly after Mary Chaworth’s marriage Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he formed a romantic attachment to a young chorister, named Edleston, whose life he had saved from drowning. Writing to Miss Elizabeth Pigot on June 30, 1807, Byron says:
‘I quit Cambridge with very little regret, because our set are vanished, and my musical protégé (Edleston), before mentioned, has left the choir, and is stationed in a mercantile house of considerable eminence in the Metropolis. You may have heard me observe he is, exactly to an hour, two years younger than myself. I found him grown considerably, and, as you may suppose, very glad to see his former Patron.30 He is nearly my height, very thin, very fair complexion, dark eyes, and light locks.
‘My opinion of his mind you already know; I hope I shall never have occasion to change it.’
On July 5, 1807, Byron again wrote to Miss Pigot:
‘At this moment I write with a bottle of claret in my head and tears in my eyes; for I have just parted with my “Cornelian,”31 who spent the evening with me. As it was our last interview, I postponed my engagement to devote the hours of the Sabbath to friendship: Edleston and I have separated for the present, and my mind is a chaos of hope and sorrow… I rejoice to hear you are interested in my protégé; he has been my almost constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manner attached me to him for ever. He departs for a mercantile house in Town in October, and we shall probably not meet till the expiration of my minority, when I shall leave to his decision, either entering as a partner through my interest, or residing with me altogether. Of course he would, in his present frame of mind, prefer the latter, but he may alter his opinion previous to that period; however, he shall have his choice. I certainly love him more than any human being, and neither time nor distance have had the least effect on my (in general) changeable disposition. In short, we shall put Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby (the “Ladies of Llangollen,” as they were called) to the blush, Pylades and Orestes out of countenance, and want nothing but a catastrophe like Nisus and Euryalus, to give Jonathan and David the “go by.” He certainly is perhaps more attached to me than even I am in return. During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every day, summer and winter, without passing one tiresome moment, and separated each time with increasing reluctance. I hope you will one day see us together. He is the only being I esteem, though I like many.’
This letter shows the depth of the boyish affection that had sprung up between two lads with little experience of life. The attachment on both sides was sincere, but not more so than many similar boy friendships, which, alas! fade away under the chilling influences of time and circumstance. In this case the ‘Cornelian Heart’ that had sparkled with the tears of Edleston, and which, in the fervour of his feelings, Byron had suspended round his neck, was, not long afterwards, transferred to Miss Elizabeth Pigot.
A vague notion seems to prevail that the inspiration of these ‘Thyrza’ poems is in some way connected with Edleston. This idea seems to have arisen from Byron’s allusion to a pledge of affection given in better days:
‘Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token!’
We cannot accept this theory, being of opinion, not lightly formed, that the ‘bitter pledge’ referred to had a far deeper and a more lasting significance than ever could have belonged to ‘the Cornelian heart that was broken.’
In later years, it will be remembered, Byron told Medwin that, shortly after his arrival at Cambridge, he fell into habits of dissipation, in order to drown the remembrance of a hopeless passion for Mary Chaworth. That Mary Chaworth held his affections at that time is beyond question. She also had given Byron ‘a token,’ which was still in his possession when the ‘Thyrza’ poems were written; whereas Edleston’s gift had passed to other hands. The following anecdote, related by the Countess Guiccioli, may be accepted on Byron’s authority:
‘One day (while Byron and Musters were bathing in the Trent – a river that runs through the grounds of Colwick) Mr. Musters perceived a ring among Lord Byron’s clothes, left on the bank. To see and take possession of it was the affair of a moment. Musters had recognized it as having belonged to Miss Chaworth. Lord Byron claimed it, but Musters would not restore the ring. High words were exchanged. On returning to the house, Musters jumped on a horse, and galloped off to ask an explanation from Miss Chaworth, who, being forced to confess that Lord Byron wore the ring with her consent, felt obliged to make amends to Musters, by promising to declare immediately her engagement with him.’
It is therefore probable that the ‘dear simple gift,’ of the first draft, was the ring which Mary Chaworth had given to her boy lover in 1804, and that the words we have quoted had no connection whatever with young Edleston.
Assuming that the ‘Thyrza’ poems were addressed to a woman – and there is abundant proof of this – it is remarkable that, neither in the whole course of his correspondence with his friends, nor from any source whatever, can any traces be found of any other serious attachment which would account for the poems in question. Between the date of the marriage, in 1805, and the autumn of 1808, Byron and Mary Chaworth had not met. It will be remembered that in the autumn – only eight months before he left England with Hobhouse – Byron met Mary Chaworth at dinner in her own home. The effect of that meeting, which he has himself described, shows the depth of his feelings, and precludes the idea that he could at that time have been deeply interested in anyone else. After that meeting Byron remained three months in the neighbourhood of Annesley; and it may be inferred that an intimacy sprang up between them, which was broken off somewhat abruptly by Mary’s husband. There are traces of this in ‘Lara.’
At the end of November, 1808, Byron writes from Newstead to his sister:
‘I am living here alone, which suits my inclination better than society of any kind… I am a very unlucky fellow, for I think I had naturally not a bad heart; but it has been so bent, twisted, and trampled on, that it has now become as hard as a Highlander’s heelpiece.’
A fortnight later he writes to Hanson, his agent, and talks of either marrying for money or blowing his brains out. It was then that he wrote those verses addressed to Mary Chaworth:
‘When man, expell’d from Eden’s bowers,
A moment linger’d near the gate,
Each scene recall’d the vanish’d hours,
And bade him curse his future fate.
‘In flight I shall be surely wise,
Escaping from temptation’s snare;
I cannot view my Paradise
Without the wish of dwelling there.’
On January 25, 1809, Byron returned to London. It is hard to believe that during those three months Byron did not often meet the lady of his love. It is more than probable that the old friendship between them had been renewed, since there is evidence to prove that, after Byron had taken his seat in the House of Lords on March 13, 1809, he confided his Parliamentary robes to Mary Chaworth’s safe-keeping, a circumstance which suggests a certain amount of neighbourly friendship.
In May, Byron again visited Newstead, where he entertained Matthews and some of his college friends. That sérénade indiscrète,
‘’Tis done – and shivering in the gale,’
which was addressed to Mary Chaworth from Falmouth on, or about, June 22, shows the state of his feelings towards her; but she does not seem to have given him any encouragement, and there was no correspondence between them during Byron’s absence from England. Between July 2, 1809, and July 15, 1811, Byron’s thoughts were fully occupied in other directions. His distractions, which may be traced in his writings, were, however, not sufficient to crush out the remembrance of that fatal infatuation. When, in 1811, he returned to England, it was without pleasure, and without the faintest hope of any renewal of an intimacy which Mary Chaworth had broken off for both their sakes. He was in no hurry to visit Newstead, where his mother anxiously awaited him, and dawdled about town, under various pretexts, until the first week in August, when he heard of his mother’s serious illness. Before Byron reached Newstead his mother had died. He seems to have heard of her illness one day, and of her death on the day following. Although there had long been a certain estrangement between them, all was now forgotten, and Byron felt his mother’s death acutely.
It was at this time that he wrote to his friend Scrope Davies:
‘Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a corpse in this house; one of my best friends (Charles Skinner Matthews) is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? I received a letter from him the day before yesterday… Come to me, Scrope; I am almost desolate – left almost alone in the world.’
In that gloomy frame of mind, in the solitude of a ruin – for Newstead at that time was but little better than a ruin – Byron, on August 12, drew up some directions for his will, in which he desired to be buried in the garden at Newstead, by the side of his favourite dog Boatswain.
On the same day he wrote to Dallas, who was superintending the printing of the first and second cantos of ‘Childe Harold’:
‘Peace be with the dead! Regret cannot wake them. With a sigh to the departed, let us resume the dull business of life, in the certainty that we also shall have our repose. Besides her who gave me being, I have lost more than one who made that being tolerable. Matthews, a man of the first talents, and also not the worst of my narrow circle, has perished miserably in the muddy waves of the Cam, always fatal to genius; my poor schoolfellow, Wingfield, at Coimbra – within a month; and whilst I had heard from all three, but not seen one… But let this pass; we shall all one day pass along with the rest. The world is too full of such things, and our very sorrow is selfish… I am already too familiar with the dead. It is strange that I look on the skulls which stand beside me (I have always had four in my study) without emotion, but I cannot strip the features of those I have known of their fleshy covering, even in idea, without a hideous sensation; but the worms are less ceremonious. Surely, the Romans did well when they burned the dead.’
The writer of this letter was in his twenty-fourth year!
Ten days later Byron writes to Hodgson:
‘Indeed the blows followed each other so rapidly that I am yet stupid from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary. I shall now waive the subject, the dead are at rest, and none but the dead can be so… I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before.’
At about the same date, in a letter to Dallas, Byron writes:
‘At three-and-twenty I am left alone, and what more can we be at seventy? It is true I am young enough to begin again, but with whom can I retrace the laughing part of my life? It is odd how few of my friends have died a quiet death – I mean, in their beds!
‘I cannot settle to anything, and my days pass, with the exception of bodily exercise to some extent, with uniform indolence and idle insipidity.’
The verses, ‘Oh! banish care,’ etc., were written at this time.
In the following lines we see that his grief at the losses he had sustained was deepened by the haunting memory of Mary Chaworth:
‘I’ve seen my bride another’s bride —
Have seen her seated by his side —
Have seen the infant which she bore
Wear the sweet smile the mother wore,
When she and I in youth have smiled
As fond and faultless as her child;
Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain,
Ask if I felt no secret pain.
And I have acted well my part,
And made my cheek belie my heart,
Returned the freezing glance she gave,
Yet felt the while that woman’s slave;
Have kissed, as if without design,
The babe which ought to have been mine,
And showed, alas! in each caress
Time had not made me love the less.’
Moore, who knew more of the inner workings of Byron’s mind in later years than anyone else, has told us that the poems addressed to ‘Thyrza’ were merely ‘the abstract spirit of many griefs,’ and that the pseudonym was given to an ‘object of affection’ to whom he poured out the sorrows of his heart.
‘All these recollections,’ says Moore, ‘of the young and dead now came to mingle themselves in his mind with the image of her who, though living, was for him as much lost as they, and diffused that general feeling of sadness and fondness through his soul, which found a vent in these poems. No friendship, however warm, could have inspired sorrow so passionate; as no love, however pure, could have kept passion so chastened.
‘It was the blending of the two affections in his memory and imagination that thus gave birth to an ideal object combining the best features of both, and drew from him these saddest and tenderest of love-poems, in which we find all the depth and intensity of real feeling, touched over with such a light as no reality ever wore.’
Moore here expresses himself guardedly. He was one of the very few who knew the whole story of Mary Chaworth’s associations with Byron. He could not, of course, betray his full knowledge; but he has made it sufficiently clear that Byron, in writing the ‘Thyrza’ group of poems, was merely strewing the flowers of poetry on the grave of his love for Mary Chaworth.
The first of these poems was written on the day on which he heard of the death of Edleston. In a letter to Dallas he says:
‘I have been again shocked by a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times. I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am indeed very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility.’32
Shortly after this letter was written Byron visited Cambridge, where, among the many memories which that place awakened, a remembrance of the young chorister and their ardent friendship was most vivid. Byron recollected the Cornelian that Edleston gave him as a token of friendship, and, now that the giver had passed away for ever, he regretted that he had parted with it. The following letter to Mrs. Pigot explains itself:
‘Cambridge,‘October 28, 1811.
‘Dear Madam,
‘I am about to write to you on a silly subject, and yet I cannot well do otherwise. You may remember a cornelian which some years ago I consigned to Miss Pigot – indeed I gave to her – and now I am going to make the most selfish and rude of requests. The person who gave it to me, when I was very young, is dead, and though a long time has elapsed since we met, as it was the only memorial I possessed of that person (in whom I was very much interested), it has acquired a value by this event I could have wished it never to have borne in my eyes. If, therefore, Miss Pigot should have preserved it, I must, under these circumstances, beg her to excuse my requesting it to be transmitted to me at No. 8, St. James’ Street, London, and I will replace it by something she may remember me by equally well. As she was always so kind as to feel interested in the fate of him that formed the subject of our conversation, you may tell her that the giver of that cornelian died in May last of a consumption at the age of twenty-one, making the sixth, within four months, of friends and relatives that I have lost between May and the end of August.
‘Believe me, dear madam,‘Yours very sincerely,‘Byron.’
The cornelian when found, was returned to Byron, but apparently in a broken condition.
‘Ill-fated Heart! and can it be,
That thou shouldst thus be rent in twain?’
It was through the depressing influence of solitude that the idea entered Byron’s mind to depict his (possibly eternal) separation from Mary Chaworth in terms synonymous with death. With a deep feeling of desolation he recalled every incident of his boyish love. We have seen how the image of his lost Mary, now the wife of his rival, deepened the gloom caused by the sudden death of his mother, and of some of his college friends. It was to Mary, whom he dared not name, that he cried in his agony:
‘By many a shore and many a sea
Divided, yet beloved in vain;
The Past, the Future fled to thee,
To bid us meet – no, ne’er again!’
Her absence from Annesley, where he had hoped to find her on his return home, was a great disappointment to him.
‘Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!
Whom Youth and Youth’s affections bound to me;
Who did for me what none beside have done,
Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee.
What is my Being! thou hast ceased to be!
Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
Who mourns o’er hours which we no more shall see —
Would they had never been, or were to come!
Would he had ne’er returned to find fresh cause to roam!
‘Oh I ever loving, lovely, and beloved!
How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.
All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast;
The Parent, Friend, and now the more than Friend:
Ne’er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,
And grief with grief continuing still to blend,
Hath snatch’d the little joy that Life hath yet to lend.
********
‘What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from Life’s page,
And be alone on earth, as I am now.
Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,
O’er Hearts divided and o’er Hopes destroyed:
Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,
Since Time hath reft whate’er my soul enjoyed,
And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloyed.’
These stanzas were attached to the second canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ after that poem was in the press. Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, who so ably edited the latest edition of the poetry of Byron, states that they were sent to Dallas on the same day that Byron composed the poem ‘To Thyrza.’ This is significant, as also his attempt to mystify Dallas by telling him that he had again (October 11, 1811) been shocked by a death. This was true enough, for he had on that day heard of the death of Edleston; but it was not true that the stanzas we have quoted had any connection with that event. Mr. Coleridge in a note says:
‘In connection with this subject, it may be noted that the lines 6 and 7 of Stanza XCV.,
‘“Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
Who mourns o’er hours which we no more shall see,”
do not bear out Byron’s contention to Dallas (Letters, October 14 and 31, 1811) that in these three in memoriam stanzas (IX., XCV., XCVI.) he is bewailing an event which took place after he returned to Newstead.33 The “more than friend” had “ceased to be” before the “wanderer” returned. It is evident that Byron did not take Dallas into his confidence.’
Assuredly he did not. The ‘more than friend’ was not dead; she had merely absented herself, and did not stay to welcome the ‘wanderer’ on his return from his travels. She was, however, dead to him in a sense far deeper than mere absence at such a time.
‘The absent are the dead – for they are cold,
And ne’er can be what once we did behold.’34
Mary Chaworth’s presence would have consoled him at a time when he felt alone in the world. He feared that she was lost to him for ever. He knew her too well to suppose that she could ever be more to him than a friend; and yet it was just that female sympathy and friendship for which he so ardently yearned. In his unreasonableness, he was both hurt and disappointed that this companion of his earlier days should have kept away from her home at that particular time, and of course misconstrued the cause. With the feeling that this parting must be eternal, he wished that they could have met once more.
‘Could this have been – a word, a look,
That softly said, “We part in peace,”
Had taught my bosom how to brook,
With fainter sighs, thy soul’s release.’
In the bitterness of his desolation he recalled the days when they were at Newstead together – probably stolen interviews, which find no place in history – when
‘many a day
In these, to me, deserted towers,
Ere called but for a time away,
Affection’s mingling tears were ours?
Ours, too, the glance none saw beside;
The smile none else might understand;
The whispered thought: the walks aside;
The pressure of the thrilling hand;
The kiss so guiltless and relined,
That Love each warmer wish forbore;
Those eyes proclaimed so pure a mind,
Ev’n Passion blushed to plead for more.
The tone that taught me to rejoice,
When prone, unlike thee, to repine;
The song, celestial from thy voice,
But sweet to me from none but thine;
The pledge we wore —I wear it still,
But where is thine? Ah! where art thou?
Oft have I borne the weight of ill,
But never bent beneath till now!’
Six days after these lines were written Byron left Newstead. Writing to Hodgson from his lodgings in St. James’s Street, he enclosed some stanzas which he had written a day or two before, ‘on hearing a song of former days.’ The lady, whose singing now so deeply impressed Byron, was the Hon. Mrs. George Lamb, whom he had met at Melbourne House.
In this, the second of the ‘Thyrza’ poems, the allusions to Mary Chaworth are even more marked. Byron says the songs of Mrs. George Lamb ‘speak to him of brighter days,’ and that he hopes to hear those strains no more:
‘For now, alas!
I must not think, I may not gaze,
On what I am– on what I was.
The voice that made those sounds more sweet
Is hush’d, and all their charms are fled.
******
‘On my ear
The well-remembered echoes thrill;
I hear a voice I would not hear,
A voice that now might well be still.
******
‘Sweet Thyrza! waking as in sleep,
Thou art but now a lovely dream;
A Star that trembled o’er the deep,
Then turned from earth its tender beam.
But he who through Life’s dreary way
Must pass, when Heaven is veiled in wrath,
Will long lament the vanished ray
That scattered gladness o’er his path.’
In Byron’s imagination Mary Chaworth was always hovering over him like a star. She was the ‘starlight of his boyhood,’ the ‘star of his destiny,’ and three years later the poet, in his unpublished fragment ‘Harmodia,’ speaks of Mary as his
‘melancholy star
Whose tearful beam shoots trembling from afar.’
The third and last of the ‘Thyrza’ poems must have been written at about the same time as the other two. It appeared with ‘Childe Harold’ in 1812. Byron, weary of the gloom of solitude, and tortured by ‘pangs that rent his heart in twain,’ now determined to break away and seek inspiration for that mental energy which formed part of his nature. Man, he says, was not made to live alone.