Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/295

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CANTO III.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
259

LXIX.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind:
All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil[1][2]
In the hot throng, where we become the spoil
Of our infection, till too late and long
We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong
Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.[3]


LXX.

There, in a moment, we may plunge our years[4]

In fatal penitence, and in the blight

    innocent," her quality of inspiration is not "strained." Byron, too, was nature's priest—

    "And by that vision splendid
    Was on his way attended."]

  1. In its own deepness——.—[MS.]
  2. [The metaphor is derived from a hot spring which appears to boil over at the moment of its coming to the surface. As the particles of water, when they emerge into the light, break and bubble into a seething mass; so, too, does passion chase and beget passion in the "hot throng" of general interests and individual desires.]
  3. One of a worthless world—to strive where none are strong.—[MS.]
  4. [The thought which underlies the whole of this passage is that man is the creature and thrall of fate. In society, in the world, he is exposed to the incidence of passion, which he can neither resist nor yield to without torture. He is overcome by the world, and, as a last resource, he turns to nature and solitude. He lifts up his eyes to the hills, unexpectant of Divine aid, but in the hope that, by claiming