Stanzas To The Po.[588]

1.     River, that rollest by the ancient walls,     Where dwells the Lady of my love, when she     Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls     A faint and fleeting memory of me: 2.     What if thy deep and ample stream should be     A mirror of my heart, where she may read     The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,     Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed! 3.     What do I say - a mirror of my heart?     Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?     Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;     And such as thou art were my passions long. 4.     Time may have somewhat tamed them, - not for ever;     Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye     Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!     Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away: 5.     But left long wrecks behind, and now again,[ib]     Borne in our old unchanged career, we move:     Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,     And I - to loving one I should not love. 6.     The current I behold will sweep beneath     Her native walls, and murmur at her feet;     Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe     The twilight air, unharmed by summer's heat. 7.     She will look on thee, - I have looked on thee,     Full of that thought: and, from that moment, ne'er     Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see,     Without the inseparable sigh for her! 8.     Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream, -     Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now:     Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,     That happy wave repass me in its flow! 9.     The wave that bears my tears returns no more:     Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep? -     Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,     I by thy source, she by the dark-blue deep.[ic] 10.     But that which keepeth us apart is not     Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth,     But the distraction of a various lot,     As various as the climates of our birth. 11.     A stranger loves the Lady of the land,[id]     Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood     Is all meridian, as if never fanned     By the black wind that chills the polar flood.[ie] 12.     My blood is all meridian; were it not,     I had not left my clime, nor should I be,[if]     In spite of tortures, ne'er to be forgot,     A slave again of love, - at least of thee. 13.     'Tis vain to struggle - let me perish young -     Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;     To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,     And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved.     June, 1819.                 [First published, Conversations of Lord Byron, 1824, 4, pp. 24-26.]