Childe Harold's pilgrimage : a romaunt . its from society we learn to live,Tis solitude should teach us how to die;It hath no flatterers ; vanity can giveNo hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive : XXXIV. Or, it may be, with demons, who impairThe strength of better thoughts, and seek their preyIn melancholy bosoms, such as wereOf moody texture from their earliest day,And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,Deeming themselves predestined to a doomWhich is not of the pangs that pass away;Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier
Childe Harold's pilgrimage : a romaunt . its from society we learn to live,Tis solitude should teach us how to die;It hath no flatterers ; vanity can giveNo hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive : XXXIV. Or, it may be, with demons, who impairThe strength of better thoughts, and seek their preyIn melancholy bosoms, such as wereOf moody texture from their earliest day,And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,Deeming themselves predestined to a doomWhich is not of the pangs that pass away;Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. XXXV. Ferrara ! in thy wide and grass-grown streets,Whose symmetry was not for solitude,There seems as twere a curse upon the seatsOf former sovereigns, and the antique brood CANTO IV CHLLDE HAROLD S PILGRIMAGE 209 Of Este, which for many an age made goodIts strength within thy walls, and was of yorePatron or tyrant, as the changing moodOf petty power impelld, of those who woreThe wreath which Dantes brow alone had worn XXXVI. And Tasso is their glory and their to his strain ! and then survey his cell !And see how dearly earnd Torquatos fame,And where Alfonso bade his poel dwell : 2 I 210 uhilde haholds pilgrimage CANTO iv The miserable despot could not quellThe insulted mind lie sought to quench, and hi endWith the surrounding maniacs, in the hellAVhere he had plunged it. Glory without endScatterd the clouds away; and on that name attend XXXVII. The tears and praises of all time ; while thineWould rot in its oblivion—in the sinkOf worthless dust, which from thy boasted lineIs shaken into nothing—but the linkThou formest in his fortunes bids us thinkOf thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn :Alfonso ! how thy ducal pageants shrinkFrom thee ! if in another station born,Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou madst to mourn : XXXVIII. Thou ! formd to eat, and be despised, and die,Even as the beasts that perish, save that thouBadst a more splendid
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