Gallipolis Journal

A Beautiful Apostrophe to the
Memory of Byron.--Grace Greenwood,
in her last visit to Europe, paid a visit,
of course, to Newstead Abbey, in
England, the well-known residence of
Lord Byron. In speaking of the event,
she beautifully and touchingly alludes
to the love of the Poet for Mary Chaworth:

"Strangely sorrowful, almost agonizingly
regretful, were the thoughts which
swept over my mind, wave after wave,
and shook my heart like a tempest, as I
stood in the place where the young poet
passed many hours of silent, though it
may be, of lonely wretchedness.

I never before so deeply felt how passing
mournful was the story of Byron's
first and only love. That Mary Chaworth
returned the passion of her young
poet-lover I have no doubt; but, like
the Montagues and Capulets, the houses
of Chaworth and Byron were at feud.
Mary had not the strength and truth of
Juliet, and so they parted--a separation
by far more piteous for her, and more
fatal to him, than death amid the full
summer brightness of happy love.--
This, not Shakspeare's, was the true-
soul tragedy! Might she not have redeemed
even his wayward and erring
nature by the divinity of a pure and
steadfast faith? But it was not to be!
Mary bestowed her hand upon a man of
whom little else can be said than that
he ranked among the most eminent
sportsmen of the day--lived, it is said,
to weep wild tears over the words which
have linked her name in sorrowful immortality
with her lover's, and died in
broken-heartedness, at last--while he,
grown reckless, restless, and defiant,
the very core of his heart turned to
bitter ashes, forgetting God, and distrusting
and despairing his brother,
swept on his glorious, shameful, sorrowful,
and stormy career, till the shadows
deepened, and the long night closed in.

"The tablet raised to the memory of
Byron, by his sister Augusta, is plain,
and so, in excellent taste. As I stood
on that rude slab, in that dismal and
mouldy old church, I was struck most
painfully with the miserable unfitness of
all the surroundings of his tomb, who
loved all beauty with a poet's intense
passion. I could not believe that grand
head, with its clustering, dark curls,
those eyes of strange brightness, and
lips of proud beauty, those fair, patrician
hands, and that fiery, princely heart,
were dust and darkness at my feet.--
Better would it have been to have lain
him, where he willed to be, by his faithful
Boatswain, 'in the vault at Newstead.'"