XXXVII.

   Dear Nature is the kindest mother still;
   Though always changing, in her aspect mild: 
   From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
   Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child. 
   Oh! she is fairest in her features wild,
   Where nothing polished dares pollute her path: 
   To me by day or night she ever smiled,
   Though I have marked her when none other hath,
And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.

XXXVIII.

   Land of Albania! where Iskander rose;
   Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise,
   And he his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes,
   Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprise: 
   Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes
   On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men! 
   The cross descends, thy minarets arise,
   And the pale crescent sparkles in the glen,
Through many a cypress grove within each city’s ken.

XXXIX.

   Childe Harold sailed, and passed the barren spot
   Where sad Penelope o’erlooked the wave;
   And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot,
   The lover’s refuge, and the Lesbian’s grave. 
   Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save
   That breast imbued with such immortal fire? 
   Could she not live who life eternal gave? 
   If life eternal may await the lyre,
That only Heaven to which Earth’s children may aspire.

XL.

   ’Twas on a Grecian autumn’s gentle eve,
   Childe Harold hailed Leucadia’s cape afar;
   A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave: 
   Oft did he mark the scenes of vanished war,
   Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar: 
   Mark them unmoved, for he would not delight
   (Born beneath some remote inglorious star)
   In themes of bloody fray, or gallant fight,
But loathed the bravo’s trade, and laughed at martial wight.

XLI.

   But when he saw the evening star above
   Leucadia’s far-projecting rock of woe,
   And hailed the last resort of fruitless love,
   He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow: 
   And as the stately vessel glided slow
   Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount,
   He watched the billows’ melancholy flow,
   And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont,
More placid seemed his eye, and smooth his pallid front.

XLII.

   Morn dawns; and with it stern Albania’s hills,
   Dark Suli’s rocks, and Pindus’ inland peak,
   Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills,
   Arrayed in many a dun and purple streak,
   Arise; and, as the clouds along them break,
   Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer;
   Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak,
   Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear,
And gathering storms around convulse the closing year.