Childe Harolds Pilgrimage | Page 8

roguish eye,
Yet ever
well inclined to heal the wound;
None through their cold disdain are
doomed to die,
As moon-struck bards complain, by Love's sad
archery.
LXXIII.
Hushed is the din of tongues--on gallant steeds,
With milk-white crest,
gold spur, and light-poised lance, Four cavaliers prepare for venturous
deeds,
And lowly bending to the lists advance;
Rich are their scarfs,
their chargers featly prance:
If in the dangerous game they shine
to-day,
The crowd's loud shout, and ladies' lovely glance,
Best prize
of better acts, they bear away,
And all that kings or chiefs e'er gain
their toils repay.

LXXIV.
In costly sheen and gaudy cloak arrayed,
But all afoot, the
light-limbed matadore
Stands in the centre, eager to invade
The
lord of lowing herds; but not before
The ground, with cautious tread,
is traversed o'er,
Lest aught unseen should lurk to thwart his speed:

His arms a dart, he fights aloof, nor more
Can man achieve without
the friendly steed -
Alas! too oft condemned for him to bear and
bleed.
LXXV.
Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
The den expands, and
expectation mute
Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls.

Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute,
And wildly staring,
spurns, with sounding foot,
The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe:

Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit
His first attack,
wide waving to and fro
His angry tail; red rolls his eye's dilated glow.
LXXVI.
Sudden he stops; his eye is fixed: away,
Away, thou heedless boy!
prepare the spear;
Now is thy time to perish, or display
The skill
that yet may check his mad career.
With well-timed croupe the
nimble coursers veer;
On foams the bull, but not unscathed he goes;

Streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear:
He flies, he
wheels, distracted with his throes:
Dart follows dart; lance, lance;
loud bellowings speak his woes.
LXXVII.
Again he comes; nor dart nor lance avail,
Nor the wild plunging of
the tortured horse;
Though man and man's avenging arms assail,

Vain are his weapons, vainer is his force.
One gallant steed is
stretched a mangled corse;
Another, hideous sight! unseamed appears,


His gory chest unveils life's panting source;
Though death-struck,
still his feeble frame he rears;
Staggering, but stemming all, his lord
unharmed he bears.
LXXVIII.
Foiled, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last,
Full in the centre
stands the bull at bay,
Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances
brast,
And foes disabled in the brutal fray:
And now the matadores
around him play,
Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand:

Once more through all he bursts his thundering way -
Vain rage! the
mantle quits the conynge hand,
Wraps his fierce eye--'tis past--he
sinks upon the sand.
LXXIX.
Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine,
Sheathed in his form
the deadly weapon lies.
He stops--he starts--disdaining to decline:

Slowly he falls, amidst triumphant cries,
Without a groan, without a
struggle dies.
The decorated car appears on high:
The corse is
piled--sweet sight for vulgar eyes;
Four steeds that spurn the rein, as
swift as shy,
Hurl the dark bull along, scarce seen in dashing by.
LXXX.
Such the ungentle sport that oft invites
The Spanish maid, and cheers
the Spanish swain:
Nurtured in blood betimes, his heart delights
In
vengeance, gloating on another's pain.
What private feuds the
troubled village stain!
Though now one phalanxed host should meet
the foe,
Enough, alas, in humble homes remain,
To meditate 'gainst
friends the secret blow,
For some slight cause of wrath, whence life's
warm stream must flow.
LXXXI.

But Jealousy has fled: his bars, his bolts,
His withered sentinel,
duenna sage!
And all whereat the generous soul revolts,
Which the
stern dotard deemed he could encage,
Have passed to darkness with
the vanished age.
Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen
(Ere
War uprose in his volcanic rage),
With braided tresses bounding o'er
the green,
While on the gay dance shone Night's lover-loving Queen?
LXXXII.
Oh! many a time and oft had Harold loved,
Or dreamed he loved,
since rapture is a dream;
But now his wayward bosom was unmoved,

For not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream:
And lately had he
learned with truth to deem
Love has no gift so grateful as his wings:

How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem,
Full from the fount
of joy's delicious springs
Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling
venom flings.
LXXXIII.
Yet to the beauteous form he was not blind,
Though now it moved
him as it moves the wise;
Not that Philosophy on such a mind
E'er
deigned to bend her chastely-awful eyes:
But Passion raves itself to
rest, or flies;
And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb,
Had
buried long his hopes, no more to rise:
Pleasure's palled victim!
life-abhorring gloom
Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting
doom.
LXXXIV.
Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng;
But viewed them not
with misanthropic hate;
Fain would he now have joined the dance,
the song,
But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate?
Nought
that he saw his sadness could abate:
Yet once he struggled 'gainst the
demon's sway,
And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate,
Poured
forth this unpremeditated lay,
To charms as fair as those that soothed

his happier day.
TO INEZ.