3 books to know Juvenalian Satire. Lord Byron

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СКАЧАТЬ ask'd no further questions, and proceeded

      On to the house, but by a private way,

      So that the few who met him hardly heeded,

      So little they expected him that day;

      If love paternal in his bosom pleaded

      For Haidee's sake, is more than I can say,

      But certainly to one deem'd dead, returning,

      This revel seem'd a curious mode of mourning.

      If all the dead could now return to life

      (Which God forbid!) or some, or a great many,

      For instance, if a husband or his wife

      (Nuptial examples are as good as any),

      No doubt whate'er might be their former strife,

      The present weather would be much more rainy—

      Tears shed into the grave of the connection

      Would share most probably its resurrection.

      He enter'd in the house no more his home,

      A thing to human feelings the most trying,

      And harder for the heart to overcome,

      Perhaps, than even the mental pangs of dying;

      To find our hearthstone turn'd into a tomb,

      And round its once warm precincts palely lying

      The ashes of our hopes, is a deep grief,

      Beyond a single gentleman's belief.

      He enter'd in the house—his home no more,

      For without hearts there is no home; and felt

      The solitude of passing his own door

      Without a welcome; there he long had dwelt,

      There his few peaceful days Time had swept o'er,

      There his worn bosom and keen eye would melt

      Over the innocence of that sweet child,

      His only shrine of feelings undefiled.

      He was a man of a strange temperament,

      Of mild demeanour though of savage mood,

      Moderate in all his habits, and content

      With temperance in pleasure, as in food,

      Quick to perceive, and strong to bear, and meant

      For something better, if not wholly good;

      His country's wrongs and his despair to save her

      Had stung him from a slave to an enslaver.

      The love of power, and rapid gain of gold,

      The hardness by long habitude produced,

      The dangerous life in which he had grown old,

      The mercy he had granted oft abused,

      The sights he was accustom'd to behold,

      The wild seas, and wild men with whom he cruised,

      Had cost his enemies a long repentance,

      And made him a good friend, but bad acquaintance.

      But something of the spirit of old Greece

      Flash'd o'er his soul a few heroic rays,

      Such as lit onward to the Golden Fleece

      His predecessors in the Colchian days;

      T is true he had no ardent love for peace—

      Alas! his country show'd no path to praise:

      Hate to the world and war with every nation

      He waged, in vengeance of her degradation.

      Still o'er his mind the influence of the clime

      Shed its Ionian elegance, which show'd

      Its power unconsciously full many a time,—

      A taste seen in the choice of his abode,

      A love of music and of scenes sublime,

      A pleasure in the gentle stream that flow'd

      Past him in crystal, and a joy in flowers,

      Bedew'd his spirit in his calmer hours.

      But whatsoe'er he had of love reposed

      On that beloved daughter; she had been

      The only thing which kept his heart unclosed

      Amidst the savage deeds he had done and seen;

      A lonely pure affection unopposed:

      There wanted but the loss of this to wean

      His feelings from all milk of human kindness,

      And turn him like the Cyclops mad with blindness.

      The cubless tigress in her jungle raging

      Is dreadful to the shepherd and the flock;

      The ocean when its yeasty war is waging

      Is awful to the vessel near the rock;

      But violent things will sooner bear assuaging,

      Their fury being spent by its own shock,

      Than the stern, single, deep, and wordless ire

      Of a strong human heart, and in a sire.

      It is a hard although a common case

      To find our children running restive—they

      In whom our brightest days we would retrace,

      Our little selves re-form'd in finer clay,

      Just as old age is creeping on apace,

      And clouds come o'er the sunset of our day,

      They kindly СКАЧАТЬ