y heart riven,
Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
And only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.

"From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy,
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few,
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
_Learning to lie with silence, would_ SEEM _true,
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy_."

His spirit stirred with excitement, he invoked the aid of the divinity
whose shrine these Roman remains appeared to be:--

"O Time! the beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled;
Time! the corrector where our judgments err,
The test of truth, love--sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists--from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it doth defer--
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift."

And what was this gift? Was it vengeance? No! It was the _repentance_ of
those who had done and were still doing him wrong; that was the prayer
he sent up to heaven, so as not to have worn in vain this iron in his
soul, and so that, when his earthly life should cease, his spirit,--

"_Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their soften'd spirits sink, and move,
In hearts all rocky now, the late remorse of love._"[94]

Arrived before the temple of Nemesis,--that dread divinity who has never
left unpunished human injustice,--Lord Byron evokes her thus:--

"Dost thou not hear my heart?--Awake! thou shalt, and must."

He feels that the guilty will not escape the vengeance of the goddess,
since it is _inevitable_; but, as to him, he will not wreak it. Nemesis
shall watch; he will sleep. _He reserves to himself, however, one
revenge. Which? Ever the same:--Forgiveness!_

"That curse shall be forgiveness."[95]

Now, we have seen that his generosity did not recoil from any sacrifice
of fortune, repose, affection; we have seen it strong against all
privations, all instincts, all interests; in short, we have looked at it
under all the aspects that constitute great beauty of soul. There
remains only one degree more for him to attain--heroism. Bu