252
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
[CANTO III.
But Peace destroyed what War could never blight,
And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain—
On which the iron shower for years had poured in vain.[1]
LIX.
Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted
The stranger fain would linger on his way!
Thine is a scene alike where souls united
Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray;
And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey[2]
On self-condemning bosoms, it were here,
Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,
Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,[3]
Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year.[4]
LX.
Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!
- ↑ [Compare Gray's lines in The Fatal Sisters—
"Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darken'd air."] - ↑ And could the sleepless vultures——.—[MS.]
- ↑ Rustic not rude, sublime yet not austere.—[MS.]
- ↑ [Lines 8 and 9 may be cited as a crying instance of Byron's faulty technique. The collocation of "awful" with "austere," followed by "autumn" in the next line, recalls the afflictive assonance of "high Hymettus," which occurs in the beautiful passage which he stole from The Curse of Minerva and prefixed to the third canto of The Corsair. The sense of the passage is that, as in autumn, the golden mean between summer and winter, the year is at its full, so in the varied scenery of the Rhine there is a harmony of opposites, a consummation of beauty.]
