Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/647

CANTO II.] But grant his vices, grant them all his own,

How small their theatre without a throne!

IX.

Thou smilest:—these comparisons seem high

To those who scan all things with dazzled eye;

Linked with the unknown name of one whose doom

Has nought to do with glory or with Rome,

With Chili, Hellas, or with Araby;—

Thou smilest?—Smile; 'tis better thus than sigh;

Yet such he might have been; he was a man,

A soaring spirit, ever in the van,

A patriot hero or despotic chief,

To form a nation's glory or its grief,

Born under auspices which make us more

Or less than we delight to ponder o'er.

But these are visions; say, what was he here?

A blooming boy, a truant mutineer.

The fair-haired Torquil, free as Ocean's spray,

The husband of the bride of Toobonai.

X.

By Neuha's side he sate, and watched the waters,—

Neuha, the sun-flower of the island daughters,

Highborn, (a birth at which the herald smiles,

Without a scutcheon for these secret isles,)

Of a long race, the valiant and the free,

The naked knights of savage chivalry,

Whose grassy cairns ascend along the shore;

And thine—I've seen—Achilles! do no more.

She, when the thunder-bearing strangers came,

In vast canoes, begirt with bolts of flame,

Topped with tall trees, which, loftier than the palm,

Seemed rooted in the deep amidst its calm:

But when the winds awakened, shot forth wings