And Policy regained what Arms had lost:
For chiefs like ours in vain may laurels bloom!
Woe to the conquering, not the conquered host,
Since baffled Triumph droops on Lusitania’s coast.
XXVI.
And ever since that martial synod
met,
Britannia sickens, Cintra, at thy
name;
And folks in office at the mention
fret,
And fain would blush, if blush they
could, for shame.
How will posterity the deed proclaim!
Will not our own and fellow-nations
sneer,
To view these champions cheated
of their fame,
By foes in fight o’erthrown,
yet victors here,
Where Scorn her finger points through many a coming
year?
XXVII.
So deemed the Childe, as o’er
the mountains he
Did take his way in solitary guise:
Sweet was the scene, yet soon he
thought to flee,
More restless than the swallow in
the skies:
Though here awhile he learned to
moralise,
For Meditation fixed at times on
him,
And conscious Reason whispered to
despise
His early youth misspent in maddest
whim;
But as he gazed on Truth, his aching eyes grew dim.
XXVIII.
To horse! to horse! he quits, for
ever quits
A scene of peace, though soothing
to his soul:
Again he rouses from his moping
fits,
But seeks not now the harlot and
the bowl.
Onward he flies, nor fixed as yet
the goal
Where he shall rest him on his pilgrimage;
And o’er him many changing
scenes must roll,
Ere toil his thirst for travel can
assuage,
Or he shall calm his breast, or learn experience sage.
XXIX.
Yet Mafra shall one moment claim
delay,
Where dwelt of yore the Lusians’
luckless queen;
And church and court did mingle
their array,
And mass and revel were alternate
seen;
Lordlings and freres—ill-sorted
fry, I ween!
But here the Babylonian whore had
built
A dome, where flaunts she in such
glorious sheen,
That men forget the blood which
she hath spilt,
And bow the knee to Pomp that loves to garnish guilt.
XXX.
O’er vales that teem with
fruits, romantic hills,
(Oh that such hills upheld a free-born
race!)
Whereon to gaze the eye with joyaunce
fills,
Childe Harold wends through many
a pleasant place.
Though sluggards deem it but a foolish
chase,
And marvel men should quit their
easy chair,
The toilsome way, and long, long
league to trace.
Oh, there is sweetness in the mountain
air
And life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share.