Canto III LXVII
By a lone wall a lonelier column rearsA grey and grief-worn aspect of old days'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years,And looks as with the wild bewildered gazeOf one to stone converted by amaze,Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands,Making a marvel that it not decays,When the coeval pride of human hands,Levelled Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands.
And there--oh! sweet and sacred be the name!--Julia--the daughter, the devoted--gaveHer youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claimNearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave.Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would craveThe life she lived in; but the judge was just,And then she died on him she could not save.Their tomb was simple, and without a bust,And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust.
But these are deeds which should not pass away,And names that must not wither, though the earthForgets her empires with a just decay,The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth;The high, the mountain-majesty of worth,Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,And from its immortality look forthIn the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow,Imperishably pure beyond all things below.
Words in this poem
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
- amaze v. t.
- To bewilder; to stupefy; to bring into a maze. [Pref. a- + maze.]
- coeval a.
- Of the same age; existing during the same period of time, especially time long and remote; -- usually followed by with. [L. coaevus; co- + aevum lifetime, age. See Age, n.]
- broke v. i.
- To transact business for another. Brome. [See Broker, and cf. Brook.]
- crave v. t.
- To ask with earnestness or importunity; to ask with submission or humility; to beg; to entreat; to beseech; to implore. [AS. crafian; akin to Icel. krefia, Sw. kr, Dan. kr.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- survivor n.
- One who survives or outlives another person, or any time, event, or thing.
- yonder adv.
- At a distance, but within view. [OE. yonder, ýonder; cf. OD. ginder, Goth. jaindr there. Yond, adv.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Canto III LXVII 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 III LXVII, in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #5131, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/byron-childe-harold/canto-iii-lxvii.html, id L06561.
Form and metre
Canto III LXVII 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 86%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.4 syllables. 30% 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 rearsA · daysB · yearsA · gazeB · amazeB · standsC · decaysB · handsC · landsC
- 2 ABABBCBCC nameA · gaveB · claimA · graveB · craveB · justC · saveB · bustC · dustC
- 3 ABABBCBCC awayA · earthB · decayA · birthB · worthB · woeC · forthB · snowC · belowC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| By a lone wall a lonelier column rears | 11 | ········/˘· |
| A grey and grief-worn aspect of old days | 10 | ·····/···· |
| 'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| And looks as with the wild bewildered gaze | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| Of one to stone converted by amaze, | 10 | ····˘/˘·˘/ |
| Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands, | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| Making a marvel that it not decays, | 10 | /˘·/˘···˘/ |
| When the coeval pride of human hands, | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| Levelled Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands. | 12 | /˘·······˘/· |
| And there--oh! sweet and sacred be the name!-- | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Julia--the daughter, the devoted--gave | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘· |
| Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim | 10 | ···/······ |
| Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave. | 11 | /˘·/˘···/˘· |
| Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave | 10 | /˘········ |
| The life she lived in; but the judge was just, | 10 | ·········· |
| And then she died on him she could not save. | 10 | ·········· |
| Their tomb was simple, and without a bust, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust. | 12 | ············ |
| But these are deeds which should not pass away, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| And names that must not wither, though the earth | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Forgets her empires with a just decay, | 10 | ˘/·/˘···˘/ |
| The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth; | 12 | ······˘/···· |
| The high, the mountain-majesty of worth, | 10 | ···/˘/˘˘·· |
| Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe, | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| And from its immortality look forth | 10 | ····˘/˘˘·· |
| In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, | 10 | ·····/˘/·· |
| Imperishably pure beyond all things below. | 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 1, line 9 Aventicum, near Morat, was the Roman capital of Helvetia, where Avenches now stands.
[Avenches (Wiflisburg) lies due south of the Lake of Morat, and about five miles east of the Lake of Neuchatel. As a Roman colony it bore the name of Pia Flavia Constans Emerita, and circ. 70 A.D. contained a population of sixty thousand inhabitants. It was destroyed first by the Alemanni and, afterwards, by Attila. "The Emperor Vespasian--son of the banker of the town," says Suetonius (lib. viii. i)--"surrounded the city by massive walls, defended it by semicircular towers, adorned it with a capitol, a theatre, a forum, and granted it jurisdiction over the outlying dependencies....
"To-day plantations of tobacco cover the forgotten streets of Avenches, and a single Corinthian column ['the lonelier column,' the so-called Cicognier], with its crumbling arcade, remains to tell of former grandeur."--Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne, and Savoy, by General Meredith Read, 1897, i. 16.] - Stanza 2, line 9 Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain endeavour to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Caecina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago;--it is thus:--"Julia Alpinula: Hic jaceo. Infelicis patris, infelix proles. Deae Aventiae Sacerdos. Exorare patris necem non potui: Male mori in fatis ille erat. Vixi annos XXIII."--I know of no human composition so affecting as this, nor a history of deeper interest. These are the names and actions which ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy tenderness, from the wretched and glittering detail of a confused mass of conquests and battles, with which the mind is roused for a time to a false and feverish sympathy, from whence it recurs at length with all the nausea consequent on such intoxication.
[A mutinous outbreak among the Helvetii, which had been provoked by the dishonest rapacity of the twenty-first legion, was speedily quelled by the Roman general Aulus Caecina. Aventicum surrendered (A.D. 69), but Julius Alpinus, a chieftain and supposed ring-leader, was singled out for punishment and put to death. "The rest," says Tacitus, "were left to the ruth or ruthlessness of Vitellius" (Histor., i. 67, 68). Julia Alpinula and her epitaph were the happy inventions of a sixteenth-century scholar. "It appears," writes Lord Stanhope, "that this inscription was given by one Paul Wilhelm, a noted forger (falsarius), to Lipsius, and by Lipsius handed over to Gruterus. Nobody, either before or since Wilhelm, has even pretended to have seen the stone ... as to any son or daughter of Julius Alpinus, history is wholly silent" (Quarterly Review, June, 1846, vol. lviii. p. 61; Historical Essays, by Lord Mahon, 1849, pp. 297, 298).] - Stanza 3, line 8 This is written in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3rd, 1816), which even at this distance dazzles mine.--(July 20th.) I this day observed for some time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentiere in the calm of the lake, which I was crossing in my boat; the distance of these mountains from their mirror is sixty miles.
[The first lines of the note dated June 3, 1816, were written at "Dejean's Hotel de l'Angleterre, at Secheron, a small suburb of Geneva, on the northern side of the lake." On the 10th of June Byron removed to the Campagne Diodati, about two miles from Geneva, on the south shore of the lake (Life of Shelley, by Edward Dowden, 1896, pp. 307-309).]
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