Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/282

246 Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know

Earth paved like Heaven—and to seem such to me,

Even now what wants thy stream?—that it should Lethe be.

LI.

A thousand battles have assailed thy banks,

But these and half their fame have passed away,

And Slaughter heaped on high his weltering ranks:

Their very graves are gone, and what are they?

Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday,

And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream

Glassed, with its dancing light, the sunny ray;

But o'er the blacken'd memory's blighting dream

Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem.

LII.

Thus Harold inly said, and passed along,

Yet not insensible to all which here

Awoke the jocund birds to early song

In glens which might have made even exile dear: