nrad mark'd, and felt--ah! could he less?
Hate of that deed, but grief for her distress;
What she has done no tears could wash away,
And Heaven must punish on its angry day:
But--it was done: he knew, whate'er her guilt,
For him that poniard smote, that blood was spilt;
And he was free! and she for him had given
Her all on earth, and more than all in heaven!
(_The Corsair._)

But--"Heavens, Shelley!" cries his host, "what infinite nonsense are you
quoting?" and he hastily turns the current of conversation towards more
impersonal subjects.

The evening wears on: the guests depart: the clear spring moonlight
streams upon the winding Arno. Byron stands dreaming at the open window,
the bridges and buildings of Pisa lie still and silver-lit before him: a
subtle influence of quietude steals down upon him from the stars. "What
nothings we are," he murmurs, "before the least of these stars!" One in
particular--is it Sirius?--entrances his attention with its cold
refulgence of pure light. His thoughts involuntarily shape themselves in
rhythm and rhyme;

Sun of the sleepless! melancholy star!
Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far,
That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel,
How like art thou to joy remember'd well!
So gleams the past, the light of other days,
Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;
A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
Distinct, but distant--clear--but oh! how cold!

It is the hour when Byron's brain becomes thronged with a glowing
phantasmagoria of ideas that cry aloud for visible expression. He
forgets, under the stress of creative impulse, the sources and causes of
his inherent melancholy,--the miserable days of his childhood, with a
Fury for a mother,--the wound, never to be healed, of his unrequited
love for Mary Chaworth,--the inimical wife from whom he is eternally
alienated,--the little daughter that he may never hold in his arms,--the
beloved sister separated from his side,--the ancestral home of his
forefathers now passed into a stranger's hold,--the meteoric glory and
total eclipse of his unparalleled popularity in England,--the follies,
and worse than follies, which have made him what he is, "consistent in
nothing but his passion and his pride." These memories, like poisonous
exhalations, are banished from his mind, and leave a clear horizon for a
while,--a fertile landscape peopled with great word