Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/141

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CANTO II.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
107

Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
His mind as barren and his heart as hard,
Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared,
Aught to displace Athenæ's poor remains:
Her Sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their Mother's pains,N7
And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains.


XIII.

What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,[1]

Albion was happy in Athena's tears?

    Barbari, Fecere Barberini"). It may be added that Scotchmen are named among the volunteers who joined the Hanoverian mercenaries in the Venetian invasion of Greece in 1686. (See The Curse of Minerva: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 463, note 1; Finlay's Hist. of Greece, v. 189.)]

  1. What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
    Albion was happy while Athenæa mourned?
    Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
    Albion! I would not see thee thus adorned
    With gains thy generous spirit should have scorned,
    From Man distinguished by some monstrous sign,
    Like Attila the Hun was surely horned,[a]
    Who wrought the ravage amid works divine:
    Oh that Minerva's voice lent its keen aid to mine
    .—[MS. D. erased.]

    What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
    Albion was happy in Athenæ's tears?
    Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
    Let it not vibrate in pale Europe's ears,[b]
    The Saviour Queen, the free Britannia, wears
    The last poor blunder of a bleeding land:
    That she, whose generous aid her name endears,
    Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand,
    Which Envious Eld forbore and Tyrants left to stand
    .—[MS. D.][c]


      a. Attila was horned, if we may trust contemporary legends, and the etchings of his visage in Lavater.—[MS.]
      b. Lines 5-9 in the Dallas transcript are in Byron's handwriting.
      c. Which centuries forgot ——.—[D. erased.]