The tone, that taught me to rejoice, 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! Well hast thou left in life's best bloom I would not wish thee here again; But if in worlds more blest than this To wean me from mine anguish here. Teach me too early taught by thee! On earth thy love was such to me; It fain would form my hope in heaven! October 11. 1811. (') (1) [Mr. Moore considers "Thyrza" as if she were a mere creature of the poet's brain. "It was," he says, " about the time when he was thus bitterly feeling, and expressing, the blight which his heart had suffered from a real object of affection, that his poems on the death of an imaginary one were written; — nor is it any wonder, when we consider the peculiar circumstances under which these beautiful effusions flowed from his fancy, that, of all his strains of pathos, they should be the most touching and most pure. They were, indeed, the essence, the abstract spirit, as it were, of many griefs; a confluence of sad thoughts from many sources of sorrow, refined and warmed in their passage through his fancy, and forming thus one deep reservoir of mournful feeling." It is a pity to disturb a sentiment thus STANZAS. ["AWAY, AWAY," &c.] AWAY, away, ye notes of woe! Be silent, thou once soothing strain, Or I must flee from hence for, oh! I dare not trust those sounds again. 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; And now their softest notes repeat A dirge, an anthem o'er the dead! Yes, Thyrza! yes, they breathe of thee, Beloved dust! since dust thou art; And all that once was harmony Is worse than discord to my heart! beautifully expressed; but Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. Dallas, bearing the exact date of these lines, viz. Oct. 11th, 1811, writes as follows:-" I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times but I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors,' till I have become callous; nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed my head to the earth." In his reply to this letter, Mr. Dallas says,—“ I thank you for your confidential communication. How truly do I wish that that being had lived, and lived yours! What your obligations to her would have been in that case is inconceivable." Several years after the series of poems on Thyrza were written, Lord Byron, on being asked to whom they referred, by a person in whose tenderness he never ceased to confide, refused to answer, with marks of painful agitation, such as rendered any farther recurrence to the subject impossible. The reader must be left to form his own conclusion. The five following pieces are all devoted to Thyrza.—E] 'Tis silent all! - but on my ear 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 turn'd from earth its tender beam. But he who through life's dreary way 1 Must pass, when heaven is veil'd in wrath, Will long lament the vanish'd ray That scatter'd gladness o'er his path. December 6. 1811.(1) STANZAS. ["ONE STRUGGLE MORE," &c.] ONE struggle more, and I am free From pangs that rend my heart in twain; One last long sigh to love and thee, Then back to busy life again. (1) ["I wrote this a day or two ago, on hearing a song of former days.”— B. Letters, Dec. 8. 1811.] It suits me well to mingle now With things that never pleased before: Though every joy is fled below, What future grief can touch me more? Then bring me wine, the banquet bring; Thou 'rt nothing, all are nothing now. In vain my lyre would lightly breathe! Though pleasure fires the maddening soul, The heart the heart is lonely still! On many a lone and lovely night When stretch'd on fever's sleepless bed, "That Thyrza cannot know my pains:" My life, when Thyrza ceased to live! My Thyrza's pledge in better days, Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token! Or break the heart to which thou 'rt press'd! |