Childe Harold Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: textit{I asked not why, and recked not where, It was at length the same to me, Fettered or fetterless to be, I learned to love despair. 375 And thus when they appeared at last, And all my bonds aside were cast, These heavy walls to me had grown A hermitage â?? and all my own ! And half I felt as they were come sso To tear me from a second home : With spiders I had friendship made, And watched them in their sullen trade, Had seen the mice by moonlight play, And why should I feel less than they ? sss We were all inmates of one place, And I, the monarch of each race, Had power to kill â?? yet, strange to tell! In quiet we had learned to dwell â?? My very chains and I grew friends, 390 So much a long communion tends To make us what we are: â?? even I Regained my freedom with a sigh. MAZEPPA. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. This poem was written at Venice and Ravenna in the autumn of 1818. Byron drew his story from an incident related by Voltaire in his textit{History of Charles XII., which is as follows : â?? The Ukraine (the country of the Cossacks) has always aspired to liberty ; but being surrounded by Muscovy, the dominions of the Grand Seignior, and Poland, it has been obliged to choose a protector, and, consequently, a master, in one of these three States. The Ukrainians at first put themselves under theprotection of the Poles, who treated them with great severity. They afterwards submitted to the Russians, who governed them with despotic sway. They had originally the privilege of electing a prince under the name of general ; but they were soon deprived of that right, and their general was nominated by the court of Moscow. The person who then filled that station was a Polish gentleman, named Mazeppa, and born in the palatinate of Podolia. He had been brought up as a page ...Read More