Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/190

LXXXVI.

Save where some solitary column^[1] mourns
⁠Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;^N38
⁠Save where Tritonia's^[2] airy shrine adorns
⁠Colonna's cliff,^[3] and gleams along the wave;
⁠Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
⁠Where the gray stones and unmolested grass
⁠Ages, but not Oblivion, feebly brave;
⁠While strangers, only, not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!"

LXXXVII.

Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;

⁠Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,

1. [The "solitary column" may be that on the shore of the harbour of Colonna, in the island of Kythnos (Thermia), or one of the detached columns of the Olympeion.]
2. [Tritonia, or Tritogenia, one of Athena's names of uncertain origin. Hofmann's Lexicon Universale, Tooke's Pantheon, and Smith's Classical Dictionary are much in the same tale. Lucan (Pharsalia, lib. ix. lines 350-354) derives the epithet from Lake Triton, or Tritonis, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya—

   "Hanc et Pallas amat: patrio quæ vertice nata
   Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima cœlo est,
   Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quietâ
   Vultus vidit aquâ, posuitque in margine plantas,
   Et se dilectâ Tritonida dixit ab undâ."]

3. [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24, 1810.]