Nature, and found idyllic scenes marred by
thoughts of mankind.

Byron's turbulence never subsided; and his love for Nature,
passionate and comprehensive as it was, was always 'sickled o'er'
with misanthropy and pessimism, with the 'world-pain.'

He turned to her first through disdain of his kind and love of
introspection, and later on, when he was spurned by the London world
which had been at his feet, and disdain grew into hatred and disgust,
from a wish to be alone. But, as Boettger says:

Though this heart, in which the whole universe is reflected, is a
sick one, it has immeasurable depths, and an intensified spirit
life which draws everything under its sway and inspires it,
feeling and observing everything only as part of itself.

The basis of Byron's feeling for Nature was a revolutionary
one--elementary passion. The genius which threw off stanza after
stanza steeped in melody, was coupled with an unprecedented
subjectivity and individualism. When the first part of _Childe
Harold_ came out, dull London society was bewitched by the music and
novelty of this enthusiastic lyric of Nature, with its incomparable
interweaving of scenery and feeling:

The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew,
As glad to waft him from his native home....
But when the sun was sinking in the sea,
He seized his harp...
Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue;
The night winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew;
Yon sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native land, good-night!

He says of the beauty of Lusitania:

Oh Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land.
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!...
The horrid crags, by toppling convent crown'd,
The cork trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain moss, by scorching skies imbrown'd,
The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep.
The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
The vine on high, the willow branch below,
Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.

Yet his spirit drives him away, 'more restless than the swallow in
the skies.'

The charm of the idyllic is in the lines:

But these between, a silver str