Canto II XXX
Pass we the long, unvarying course, the trackOft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack,And each well-known caprice of wave and wind;Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find,Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel;The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind,As breezes rise and fall, and billows swell,Till on some jocund morn--lo, land! and all is well.
But not in silence pass Calypso's isles,The sister tenants of the middle deep;There for the weary still a haven smiles,Though the fair goddess long has ceased to weep,And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keepFor him who dared prefer a mortal bride:Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leapStern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide;While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed.
Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone:But trust not this; too easy youth, beware!A mortal sovereign holds her dangerous throne,And thou mayst find a new Calypso there.Sweet Florence! could another ever shareThis wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine:But checked by every tie, I may not dareTo cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.
Words in this poem
- girt v. t.
- To gird; to encircle; to invest by means of a girdle; to measure the girth of; as, to girt a tree. [From Girt, n., cf. Girth, v.]
- jocund
- Merry; cheerful; gay; airy; lively; sportive. [L. jocundus, jucundus, orig., helpful, fr. juvare to help. See Aid.]
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
- fruitless a.
- Lacking, or not bearing, fruit; barren; destitute of offspring; as, a fruitless tree or shrub; a fruitless marriage.
- dreadful a.
- Full of dread or terror; fearful.
- mentor n.
- A wise and faithful counselor or monitor. [From Mentor, the counselor of Telemachus, Gr. Monitor.]
- yonder adv.
- At a distance, but within view. [OE. yonder, ýonder; cf. OD. ginder, Goth. jaindr there. Yond, adv.]
- beware v. t.
- To avoid; to take care of; to have a care for.
- wayward a.
- Taking one's own way; disobedient; froward; perverse; willful. [OE. weiward, for aweiward, i. e., turned away. See Away, and -ward.]
- loveless a.
- Void of love; void of tenderness or kindness. Milton. Shelton.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Canto II XXX is in the public domain. This text is taken from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Project Gutenberg ebook #5131; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Lord Byron, Canto II XXX, in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #5131, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/byron-childe-harold/canto-ii-xxx.html, id L06515.
Form and metre
Canto II XXX is 27 lines in 3 stanzas of 9 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABABBCBCC, the Spenserian stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 99% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 18% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in the Spenserian stanza, other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABBCBCC trackA · behindB · tackA · windB · findB · citadelC · kindB · swellC · wellC
- 2 ABABBCBCC islesA · deepB · smilesA · weepB · keepB · brideC · leapB · tideC · sighedC
- 3 ABABBCBCC goneA · bewareB · throneA · thereB · shareB · thineC · dareB · shrineC · mineC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track | 10 | ·········· |
| Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack, | 10 | ·········· |
| And each well-known caprice of wave and wind; | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel; | 10 | ·˘·····/˘· |
| The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind, | 10 | ·····˘/˘·· |
| As breezes rise and fall, and billows swell, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Till on some jocund morn--lo, land! and all is well. | 12 | ···/˘······· |
| But not in silence pass Calypso's isles, | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| The sister tenants of the middle deep; | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| There for the weary still a haven smiles, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Though the fair goddess long has ceased to weep, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| For him who dared prefer a mortal bride: | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; | 10 | ·/·····/˘· |
| While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed. | 12 | ····˘/···/˘· |
| Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone: | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| But trust not this; too easy youth, beware! | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| A mortal sovereign holds her dangerous throne, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| And thou mayst find a new Calypso there. | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| Sweet Florence! could another ever share | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘/˘· |
| This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine: | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| But checked by every tie, I may not dare | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine. | 12 | ············ |
Notes from the edition 3
E. H. Coleridge's notes to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Works of Lord Byron, Poetry vol. II (John Murray, 1899; Project Gutenberg #25340). Bracketed passages are the editor's; unbracketed are Byron's own (Cantos I-III) or John Cam Hobhouse's (Canto IV, his 'Historical Notes'). Digit footnotes ('[17]') are informational and numbered continuously through the whole book; end-notes keyed '[n.B.]' (Byron) or '[n.H.]' (Hobhouse) follow each canto and are numbered afresh from 1 there. Both kinds are placed here by matching each note's own quoted words against the site's text, not by the number or stanza the note states, because the site's text (Gutenberg #5131) and this edition (#25340) are different editions with different stanza counts in Canto I. Lettered footnotes ('[h]', '[dn]') are manuscript and edition variant readings and are not harvested, matching the treatment of Don Juan's and byron-works-3's lettered notes.
- Stanza 2, line 1 Goza is said to have been the island of Calypso.
[Strabo (Paris, 1853), lib. i. cap. ii. 57 and lib. vii. cap. iii. 50, says that Apollodorus blamed the poet Callimachus, who was a grammarian and ought to have known better, for his contention that Gaudus, i.e. Gozo, was Calypso's isle. Ogygia (Odyssey, i. 50) was
"a sea-girt isle, Where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle."
It was surely as a poet, not as a grammarian, that Callimachus was at fault.] - Stanza 2, line 9 ["Le sage Mentor, poussant Telemaque, qui etait assis sur le bord du rocher, le precipite dans le mer et s'y jette avec lui.... Calypso inconsolable, rentra dans sa grotte, qu'elle remplit de ses hurlements."--Fenelon's Telemaque, vi., Paris, 1837. iii. 43.]
- Stanza 3, line 5 [For Mrs. Spencer Smith, see Letters, 1898, i. 244, 245, note. Moore (Life, pp. 94, 95) contrasts stanzas xxx.-xxxv., with their parade of secret indifference and plea of "a loveless heart," with the tenderness and warmth of his after-thoughts in Albania ("Lines composed during a Thunderstorm," etc.), and decides the coldness was real, the sentiment assumed. He forgets the flight of time. The lines were written in October, 1809, within a month of his departure from "Calypso's isles," and the Childe Harold stanzas belong to the early spring of 1810. "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Moreover, he speaks by the card. Writing at Athens, January 16, 1810, he tells us, "The spell is broke, the charm is flown."]
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