on Passion crowns thy hopes.

XXXV.

'Tis an old lesson--Time approves it true,
And those who know it best, deplore it most;
When all is won that all desire to woo,
The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost:
Youth wasted--Minds degraded--Honour lost--[es]
These are thy fruits, successful Passion! these![135]
If, kindly cruel, early Hope is crost,
Still to the last it rankles, a disease,
Not to be cured when Love itself forgets to please.

XXXVI.

Away! nor let me loiter in my song,
For we have many a mountain-path to tread,
And many a varied shore to sail along,
By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led--
Climes, fair withal as ever mortal head[et]
Imagined in its little schemes of thought;[eu]
Or e'er in new Utopias were ared,[136]
To teach Man what he might be, or he ought--
If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught.

XXXVII.

Dear Nature is the kindest mother still!
Though always changing, in her aspect mild;
From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.[ev]
Oh! she is fairest in her features wild,
Where nothing polished dares pollute her path:
To me by day or night she ever smiled,
Though I have marked her when none other hath,
And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.[137]

XXXVIII.

Land of Albania! where Iskander rose,[138]
Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise,[139]
And he his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes
Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprize:
Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes[11.B.]
On thee, thou rugged Nurse of savage men!
The Cross descends, thy Minarets arise,
And the pale Crescent sparkles in the glen,
Through many a cypress-grove within each city's ken.

XXXIX.

Childe Harold sailed, and passed the barren spot,[140]
Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave;[12.B.]
And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot,
The Lover's refuge, and the Lesbian's grave.
Dark Sappho! could not Verse immortal save
That breast imbued with such immortal fire?
Could she not live who life eternal gave?
If life eternal may await the lyre,