snare;
In the wind there is a voice
Shall forbid thee to rejoice;
And to thee shall night deny
All the quiet of her sky;
And the day shall have a sun
Which shall make thee wish it done.

"From thy false tears I did distil
An essence which hath strength to kill;
From thy own heart I then did wring
The black blood in its blackest spring;
From thy own smile I snatched the snake,
For there it coiled as in a brake;
From thy own lip I drew the charm
Which gave all these their chiefest harm;
In proving every poison known,
I found the strongest was thine own.

"By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathomed depths of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy,
By the perfection of thine art,
Which passed for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee, and compel
Thyself to be thy proper hell!

"And on thy head I pour the vial
Which doth devote thee to this trial;
Not to slumber, nor to die,
Shall be in thy destiny,
Though thy death shall still seem near
To thy wish, but as a fear;
Lo! the spell now works around thee,
And the clankless chain hath bound thee:
O'er thy heart and brain together
Hath the word been passed--now wither!"

The Italian poem forms, in its first and second parts, a drama as
complete as that of "Manfred," and, as I hope to render clear, one more
consistent to the leading idea, or, as critics were wont to say, "more
coherent in the unities." This idea in the one, as in the other, is that
of a powerful _sorcerer_ assailed by a fiend in the form of remorse, and
that with the most aggravating and insulting terms of contempt. In
"Manfred" the persecutor tells his victim that he shall be his own hell,
for that of all poisons his own evil heart is the worst. The Italian,
more direct and less metaphysical still, alludes, in the accusation by
the spirit, to no other punishment save that of conscience, and declares
the magician to be poisoned through and through in himself:

"Tu sei cattivo e scelerato,
Tu sei avvelenato
Nel cuore e nell anima,"

and bids him go forth to be for ever pursued by the avenger.

Byron's poem is entirely based on sorcery, and is intended to set forth
the tremendous mental struggles of a mind which has risen above mankind
with supernatural power, wh