Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation, and a broken claim:
Though the grave closed between us,—'twere the same,
I know that thou wilt love me—though to drain[1]
My blood from out thy being were an aim,
And an attainment,—all would be in vain,—
Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain.
CXVIII.
The child of Love![2] though born in bitterness,
And nurtured in Convulsion! Of thy sire
These were the elements,—and thine no less.
As yet such are around thee,—but thy fire
Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher!
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,
As—with a sigh—I deem thou might'st have been to me![3]
- ↑ [The Countess Guiccioli is responsible for the statement that Byron looked forward to a time when his daughter "would know her father by his works." "Then," said he, "shall I triumph, and the tears which my daughter will then shed, together with the knowledge that she will have the feelings with which the various allusions to herself and me have been written, will console me in my darkest hours. Ada's mother may have enjoyed the smiles of her youth and childhood, but the tears of her maturer age will be for me."—My Recollections of Lord Byron, by the Countess Guiccioli, 1869, p. 172.]
- ↑ [For a biographical notice of Ada Lady Lovelace, including letters, elsewhere unpublished, to Andrew Crosse, see Ada Byron, von E. Kölbing, Englische Studien, 1894, xix. 154-163.]
- ↑ End of Canto Third.
Byron. July 4, 1816, Diodati.—[C.]
