_Manuel_. Oh! what a death is this! that I should live To shake my gray hairs over the last chief Of the house of Sigismund.--And such a death! Alone--we know not how--unshrived--untended-- With strange accompaniments and fearful signs-- 40 I shudder at the sight--but must not leave him. _Manfred_ (_speaking faintly and slowly_). Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die. [MANFRED, _having said this, expires_. _Her_. His eyes are fixed and lifeless.--He is gone.-- _Manuel_. Close them.--My old hand quivers.--He departs-- Whither? I dread to think--but he is gone! End of Act Third, and of the poem."] [bf] {131}_Sirrah! I command thee_.--[MS.] [165] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxxxvi. line 1; stanza lxxxix. lines 1, 2; and stanza xc. lines 1, 2.] [166] ["Drove at midnight to see the Coliseum by moonlight: but what can I say of the Coliseum? It must be _seen_; to describe it I should have thought impossible, if I had not read _Manfred_.... His [Byron's] description is the very thing itself; but what cannot he do on such a subject, when his pen is like the wand of Moses, whose touch can produce waters even from the barren rock?"--Matthews's _Diary of an Invalid_, 1820, pp. 158, 159. (Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanzas cxxviii.-cxxxi.)] [167] {132}[Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanzas cvi.-cix.] [168] [For "begun," compare _Don Juan_, Canto II. stanza clxvii. line 1.] [169] {133}[Compare-- " ... but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched." _Paradise Lost_, i. 600.] [bg] _Summons_----.-[MS. M.] [170] {135} ["The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." _Paradise Lost_, i. 254, 255.] [171] {136}[In the first edition (p. 75), this line was left out at Gifford's suggestion (_Memoirs, etc.,_ 1891, i. 387). Byron was indignant, and wrote to Murray, August 12, 1817 (_Letters,_ 1900, iv. 157), "You have destroyed the whole effect and moral of the poem, by omitting the last line of Manfred's speaking."] [172] [For Goethes translation of the following passages in _Manfred_, viz (i) Manfred's soliloquy, act 1. sc. 1, line 1 _seq._; (ii) "The Incantation." act i. sc. 1, lines 192-261; (iii)Manfred's soliloquy, act ii, sc. 2 lines 164-204; (iv.) the duologue between Manfred and Astarte, act ii. sc. 4, lines 116-155; (v) a couplet, "For the night hath been to me," etc., act iii. sc. 4, lines 3, 4;--see Professor A. Brandl's _Goethe-Jahrbuch._ 1899, and Goethe's _Werke,_ 1874, iii. 201, as quoted in Appendix II., _Letters,_ 1901. v. 503-514.] THE LAMENT OF TASSO. INTRODUCTION TO _THE LAMENT OF TASSO_.