6. A Sunrise from Byron

With this bit of noonday from Homer, I will read you a sunset and a sunrise from Byron. That will enough express to you the scope and sweep of all glorious literature, from the orient of Greece herself to the death of the last Englishman who loved her. I will read you from Sardanapalus the address of the Chaldean priest Beleses to the sunset, and of the Greek slave, Myrrha, to the morning.

“The sun goes down: methinks he sets more slowly,

Taking his last look of Assyria’s empire.

How red he glares amongst those deepening clouds,

Like the blood he predicts. If not in vain,

Thou sun that sinkest, and ye stars which rise,

I have outwatch’d ye, reading ray by ray

The edicts of your orbs, which make Time tremble

For what he brings the nations,’t is the furthest

Hour of Assyria’s years. And yet how calm!

An earthquake should announce so great a fall—

A summer’s sun discloses it. You disk

To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon

Its everlasting page the end of what

Seem’d everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun!

The burning oracle of all that live,

As fountain of all life, and symbol of

Him who bestows it, wherefore dost thou limit

Thy lore unto calamity? Why not

Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine

All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart

A beam of hope athwart the future years,

As of wrath to its days? Hear me! oh, hear me!

I am thy worshipper, thy priest, thy servant—

I have gazed on thee at thy rise and fall,

And bow’d my head beneath thy mid-day beams,

When my eye dared not meet thee. I have watch’d

For thee, and after thee, and pray’d to thee,

And sacrificed to thee, and read, and fear’d thee,

And ask’d of thee, and thou hast answer’d—but

Only to thus much. While I speak, he sinks—

Is gone—and leaves his beauty, not his knowledge,

To the delighted west, which revels in

Its hues of dying glory. Yet what is

Death, so it be but glorious? ‘T is a sunset;

And mortals may be happy to resemble

The gods but in decay.”

Thus the Chaldean priest, to the brightness of the setting sun. Hear now the Greek girl, Myrrha, of his rising:—

“The day at last has broken. What a night

Hath usher’d it! How beautiful in heaven!

Though varied with a transitory storm,

More beautiful in that variety:

How hideous upon earth! where peace, and hope,

And love, and revel, in an hour were trampled

By human passions to a human chaos,

Not yet resolved to separate elements:—

’T is warring still! And can the sun so rise,

So bright, so rolling back the clouds into

Vapours more lovely than the unclouded sky,

With golden pinnacles, and snowy mountains,

And billows purpler than the ocean’s, making

In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,

So like,—we almost deem it permanent;

So fleeting,—we can scarcely call it aught

Beyond a vision, ’t is so transiently

Scatter’d along the eternal vault: and yet

It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul,

And blends itself into the soul, until

Sunrise and sunset form the haunted epoch

Of sorrow and of love.”

How often now—young maids of London,—do you make sunrise the “haunted epoch” of either?