LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

which have been derived from them, debars himself from having any choice, and remains skeptical."

      This skepticism of Lord Byron, however, did not overstep the boundaries of permissible doubt, as prescribed by an intelligence desirous of improvement. This privilege he exercised; and one might say that he remained, as it were, suspended between heaven and earth, ever looking up toward heaven, from whence he felt that light must come in the end—a light ever on the increase, which would daily steady him in the great principles which form the fundamental basis of truth—one God the creator, the real immortality of our soul, our liberty and our responsibility before God.

      Tired, however, of ever being the butt of the invectives of his enemies, and of the clergy, whom he had roughly handled in his writings, Lord Byron preferred remaining silent; and until his arrival in Switzerland he ceased making any allusions in his writings to any philosophical doubts which he may have entertained. The heroes which he selected for his Oriental poems were, moreover, too passionate to allow the mysterious voices from heaven to silence the cries from their heart. These celestial warnings, however, Byron never ceased to hear, although absorbed himself by various passions of a different kind; he was at that time almost surrounded by an idolizing public, and rocked in the cradle of success and popularity. This is but too visible whenever he ceases to talk the language of his heroes, and expresses merely his own ideas and his own personal feelings. It was at this time that he wrote those delicious "Hebrew Melodies," in which a belief in spirituality and immortality is everywhere manifest, and in which is to be found the moral indication, if not the metaphysical proof, of the working of his mind in a religious point of view, as he matured in years. Two of these Melodies especially, the third and the fifteenth, contain so positive a profession of faith in the spiritualist doctrines, and carry with them the mark of so elevated a Christian sentiment, that I can not forbear quoting them in extenso.

      IF THAT HIGH WORLD.

      I.

      If that high world, which lies beyond

       Our own, surviving Love endears;

       If there the cherish'd heart be fond,

       The eye the same, except in tears—

       How welcome those untrodden spheres!

       How sweet this very hour to die!

       To soar from earth and find all fears

       Lost in thy light—Eternity!

      II.

      It must be so: 'tis not for self

       That we so tremble on the brink;

       And striving to o'erleap the gulf,

       Yet cling to Being's severing link.

       Oh! in that future let us think

       To hold each heart the heart that shares;

       With them the immortal waters drink,

       And soul in soul grow deathless theirs!

      WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY.

      I.

      When coldness wraps this suffering clay,

       Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?

       It can not die, it can not stay,

       But leaves its darken'd dust behind.

       Then, unembodied, doth it trace

       By steps each planet's heavenly way?

       Or fill at once the realms of space,

       A thing of eyes, that all survey?

      II.

      Eternal, boundless, undecay'd,

       A thought unseen, but seeing all,

       All, all in earth or skies display'd,

       Shall it survey, shall it recall:

       Each fainter trace that memory holds

       So darkly of departed years,

       In one broad glance the soul beholds,

       And all, that was, at once appears

      III.

      Before Creation peopled earth,

       Its eyes shall roll through chaos back;

       And where the furthest heaven had birth,

       The spirit trace its rising track.

       And where the future mars or makes,

       Its glance dilate o'er all to be,

       While sun is quench'd or system breaks,

       Fix'd in his own eternity.

      IV.

      Above our Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear,

       It lives all passionless and pure:

       An age shall fleet like earthly year;

       Its years as moments shall endure.

       Away, away, without a wing,

       O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly,

       A nameless and eternal thing,

       Forgetting what it was to die.

      There is no passage in Plato, or in St. Augustin, or in Pascal, which can equal the sublimity of these stanzas.

      It was in this painful state of mind that he spent the unfortunate year of his marriage. Having separated from his wife, he came to Geneva. Here, at the same hotel—Hôtel de Secheron—Shelley had also arrived, who some years previously had offered Byron a copy of his poem entitled "Queen Mab." Here they became acquainted. Although only twenty-three years of age, Shelley had already experienced much sorrow during his short existence. Born of rich and aristocratic parents, and who professed very religious and Tory principles, Shelley had been sent to Eton at thirteen. His character was most peculiar. He had none of the tastes of the young, could not stand scholastic discipline, despised every rule and regulation, and spent his time in writing novels. He published two when fifteen years old only, which appeared to be far above what could be expected from a boy of his age, but which deserved censure from their immoral tone. Owing to the nature of his mind, and especially at a time when reading has much influence, Shelley had conceived a great taste for the books which were disapproved of at college. Consequently the doctrines of the materialist school, which were the most in fashion then both in France and in England, so poisoned his mind as to cause him to become an atheist, and to argue as such against several theologians. He even published a pamphlet, so exaggerated in tone that he entitled it, "On the Necessity of Atheism." To crown this folly, Shelley sent round to all the bishops a copy of this work, and signed it with his own name.

      Brought before the authorities to answer the charge of this audacious act, he persisted in his doctrines, and was actually preparing an answer to the judges in the same sense, when he was expelled from the university.

      For people who know England a little, it is easy to conceive what an impression such conduct must have produced on the part of the eldest son of a family like his, of Tory principles, belonging to the aristocracy, intimate with the prince regent, and stanch, orthodox and severe in their religious tenets. Expelled from college, he was likewise sent away from home; and when his indignant father consented to see him again, Shelley was treated with such coldness that he was enraged at being received as a stranger in the bosom of a family of which he was the eldest son. This was not all: even the young lady for whom Shelley had already conceived an affection, deemed it right to cast him off. Overwhelmed by all these but too well merited misfortunes, he took refuge in an inn, where he tried to poison himself.

      As he was struggling between life and death, a young girl of fifteen, Miss Westbrook, took care of him. Believing himself to be past recovery, and having no other means of rewarding her attention except by marrying her, he did so, in the hope that after his death his family would provide for her. But it is not always so easy to die, and he did not die. His health, however, was completely broken, and all that remained to him besides was an ill-assorted marriage. After the Gretna Green ceremony, Shelley went to reside in Edinburgh. His marriage

Скачать книгу