These are the expressions, not of a person connected with a tragedy, but rather of one who was a spectator of it. Every impartial person must see that. When, on another occasion, Byron told his wife that he wished he had gone abroad--as he had intended--in June, 1813, he undoubtedly implied that the fatal intimacy with Mary Chaworth would have been avoided. This seems so clear to us that we are surprised that Byron's statement on the subject of his poems should have made no impression on the mind of Lord Lovelace, and should have elicited nothing from him in 'Astarte,' except the _banale_ suggestion that Byron's literary activity _must have been accidental_! Lara, like Conrad, is a portion of Byron himself, and the poem opens with his return to Newstead after some bitter experiences, at which he darkly hints: 'Short was the course his restlessness had run, But long enough to leave him half undone.' He tells us that 'Another chief consoled his destined bride.' 'One is absent that most might decorate that gloomy pile.' 'Why slept he not when others were at rest? Why heard no music, and received no guest? All was not well, they deemed--but where the wrong? Some knew perchance.' In stanzas 17, 18, and 19, Byron draws a picture of himself, so like that his sister remarked upon it in a letter to Hodgson. After telling us that 'his heart was not by nature hard,' he says that 'His blood in temperate seeming now would flow: Ah! happier if it ne'er with guilt had glowed, But ever in that icy smoothness flowed!' The poet tells us that after Lara's death he was mourned by one whose quiet grief endured for long. 'Vain was all question asked her of the past, And vain e'en menace--silent to the last.' 'Why did she love him? Curious fool!--be still-- Is human love the growth of human will? To her he might be gentleness; the stern Have deeper thoughts than your dull eyes discern, And when they love, your smilers guess not how Beats the strong heart, though less the lips avow. They were not common links, that formed the chain That bound to Lara Kaled's heart and brain; But that wild tale she brooked not to unfold, _And sealed is now each lip that could have told_. * * * * * 'The tempest of his heart in scorn had gazed On that the feebler Elements hath raised. The Rapture of his Heart had looked on high, And asked if greater dwelt beyond the sky: Chained to excess, the slave of each extreme, How woke he from the wildness of that dream! Alas! he told not--_but he did awake To curse the withered heart that would not break_.'