xiv., _ibid_., lines 58-72.]

[gu] _Fool he not to know_.--[MS. erased.]

[gv]
_Where there were mountains there for him were friends_.
_Where there was Ocean--there he was at home_.--[MS.]

[gw] {224}
_Like the Chaldean he could gaze on stars_.--[MS.]
----_adored the stars_.--[MS. erased.]

[gx] _That keeps us from that Heaven on which we love to think_.--[MS.]

[gy]
_But in Man's dwelling--Harold was a thing_
_Restless and worn, and cold and wearisome_.--[MS.]

[286] {225} [In this stanza the mask is thrown aside, and "the real Lord
Byron" appears _in propria persona_.]

[287] [The mound with the Belgian lion was erected by William I. of
Holland, in 1823.]

[gz] {226} _None; but the moral truth tells simpler so_.--[MS.]

[288] [Stanzas xvii., xviii., were written after a visit to Waterloo.
When Byron was in Brussels, a friend of his boyhood, Pryse Lockhart
Gordon, called upon him and offered his services. He escorted him to the
field of Waterloo, and received him at his house in the evening. Mrs.
Gordon produced her album, and begged for an autograph. The next morning
Byron copied into the album the two stanzas which he had written the day
before. Lines 5-8 of the second stanza (xviii.) ran thus--

"Here his last flight the haughty Eagle flew,
Then tore with bloody beak the fatal plain,
Pierced with the shafts of banded nations through ..."

The autograph suggested an illustration to an artist, R. R. Reinagle
(1775-1863), "a pencil-sketch of a spirited chained eagle, grasping the
earth with his talons." Gordon showed the vignette to Byron, who wrote
in reply, "Reinagle is a better poet and a better ornithologist than I
am; eagles and all birds of prey attack with their talons and not with
their beaks, and I have altered the line thus--

"'Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain.'"

(See _Personal Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon_, 1830, ii. 327, 328.)]

[ha] ----_and still must be_.--[MS.]

[hb] ----_the fatal Waterloo_.--[MS.]

[hc]
_Here his last flight the haughty eagle flew_.--[MS.]
_Then bit with bloody beak the rent plain_.--[MS. erased.]
_Then tore with bloody beak_----.--[MS.]

[hd] {227} _And Gaul must wear the links of her own broken
chain_.--[MS.]

[289] [With this "obstinate questioning" of the final import and outcome
of "that world-famous Waterloo," compare the _Ode from the French_, "We
do not curse thee, Waterloo," writ