Though not to one dome circumscribeth She
Her worship, but, devoted to her rite,
A thousand Altars rise, for ever blazing bright.[1]
LXVII.
From morn till night, from night till startled Morn[2]
Peeps blushing on the Revel's laughing crew,
The Song is heard, the rosy Garland worn;
Devices quaint, and Frolics ever new.
Tread on each other's kibes. A long adieu[3]
He bids to sober joy that here sojourns:
Nought interrupts the riot, though in lieu[4]
Of true devotion monkish incense burns,
And Love and Prayer unite, or rule the hour by turns.[5]
- ↑ [It must not be supposed that the "thousand altars" of Cadiz correspond with and are in contrast to the "one dome" of Paphos. The point is that where Venus fixes her shrine, at Paphos or at Cadiz, altars blaze and worshippers abound (compare Æneid, i. 415-417)—
"Ipsa Paphum sublimis abit, sedesque revisit
Læta suas, ubi templum illi, centumque Sabæo
Ture calent aræ."] - ↑ [Compare Milton's Paradise Lost, i.—
... from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve."] - ↑ [It was seldom that Byron's memory played him false, but here a vague recollection of a Shakespearian phrase has beguiled him into a blunder. He is thinking of Hamlet's jibe on the corruption of manners, "The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe" (act v. sc. 1, line 150), and he forgets that a kibe is not a heel or a part of a heel, but a chilblain.]
- ↑
—— though in lieu
Of true devotion monkish temples share
The hours misspent, and all in turns is Love or Prayer.—[MS. erased.] - ↑ —— or rule the hour in turns.—[D.]
