Page 24 - GALIET EMPATHY and Byron´s Hero IV

what once was beauty’s veiled gaze, a tormented Hero clenched in pain, imploring, supplicating her, Alpine witch, amidst misery after misery, for that pity, for that limitless oblivion, that self- oblivion refuted by the seven immortal spirits, yet so proudly demanded and devoutly wished. Lethe’s river shall be beauty’s everlasting healing waters for the loss of the sublime, fragrant paradise he, in the beloved aura of his heart, once felt and knew and knew and felt, and touched and grasped once and only once, yet enough, enough, this, to kalov of his heart. Thus, blooming and becoming, his Immortal Rose matures, rose from whose empyrean bosom existence’s desolation is born:
But who can view the ripened rose, nor seek
To wear it? Who can curiously behold
The smoothness and the sheen of Beauty’s cheek... But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man, with whom he held Little in common; untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled, He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebelled,
Proud, though in desolation – which could find
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.”
(Childe Harold, III. 11, 12)
Byron’s ideal Rose had once, too, been existence and torment for Rousseau.43 Byron’s sublime Rose shall once, too, become Yeats’ embroidered cloths of heaven inwrought with golden and silver
43 Childe Harold. 744. Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973.
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