The limits of the sphere of dream,
   The bounds of true and false are past;
Lead us on, thou wand’ring Gleam;
   Lead us onwards, far and fast,
To the wide, the desert waste.

But see how swift, advance and shift,
   Trees behind trees—­row by row,
Now clift by clift, rocks bend and lift,
   Their frowning foreheads as we go;
The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho! 
   How they snort, and how they blow. 
Honour her to whom honour is due,
Old mother Baubo, honour to you. 
An able sow with old Baubo upon her
Is worthy of glory and worthy of honour.

The way is wide, the way is long,
But what is that for a Bedlam throng? 
Some on a ram, and some on a prong,
On poles and on broomsticks we flutter along.

Every trough will be boat enough,
With a rag for a sail, we can sweep through the sky. 
Who flies not to-night, when means he to fly?

CHAPTER XL

“The Two Foscari”—­“Werner”—­“The Deformed Transformed”—­“Don Juan”—­ “The Liberal”—­Removes from Pisa to Genoa

I have never heard exactly where the tragedy of The Two Foscari was written:  that it was imagined in Venice is probable.  The subject is, perhaps, not very fit for a drama, for it has no action; but it is rich in tragic materials, revenge and affection, and the composition is full of the peculiar stuff of the poet’s own mind.  The exulting sadness with which Jacopo Foscari looks in the first scene from the window, on the Adriatic, is Byron himself recalling his enjoyment of the sea.

How many a time have I
Cloven with arm still lustier, heart more daring,
The wave all roughen’d:  with a swimmer’s stroke
Flinging the billows back from my drench’d hair,
And laughing from my lip th’ audacious brine
Which kiss’d it like a wine-cup.

The whole passage, both prelude and remainder, glows with the delicious recollections of laying and revelling in the summer waves.  But the exile’s feeling is no less beautifully given and appropriate to the author’s condition, far more so, indeed, than to that of Jacopo Foscari.

Had I gone forth
From my own land, like the old patriarchs, seeking
Another region with their flocks and herds;
Had I been cast out like the Jews from Zion,
Or like our fathers driven by Attila
From fertile Italy to barren islets,
I would have given some tears to my late country,
And many thoughts; but afterward address’d
Myself to those about me, to create
A new home and first state.

What follows is still more pathetic: