Music, Arrangement & performance by Mimmo Zaccaria Lyrics: Adptation from Lord Byron, Childe
Harold's pilgrimage, Canto the Third.
Here are the first two stanzas of the original text.
-
Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes, they smiled,
And then we parted,--not as now we part,
But with a hope. -
Awaking with a start,
The waters heave around me; and on high
The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.
II.
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar!
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!
Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed,
And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale,
Still must I on; for I am as a weed,
Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.
-
NOTES
The first two cantos were first published in 1812 and the hero's pilgrimage covers much of the ground of Byron's recent tour (1809-11) in southern Europe. In April 1816, Byron quit England for good, travelled through Brussels, sailed up the Rhine to Switzerland, then settled on the shores of Lake Geneva (Leman), where Shelley was his neighbour and frequent companion during the spring and summer. Canto the Third was written in May and June and first published in November. Childe Harold takes the same journey as Byron had just taken, and the line between the poet's own meditations and those he attributes to his pilgrim is rarely easy to draw. Canto the Fourth was written in 1817 and first published in 1818. Byron here uses his travels in Italy as poetic material without resorting to the fictional hero, Harold. "It was in vain that I asserted, and imagined I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have done so" (Byron's "Preface" to Canto the Fourth).
-
Childe: an archaic title of courtesy once given to a nobleman's eldest son.
-
Byron's daughter Ada was born in December 1815. He had not seen her since she was five weeks old.
0 Comments