"And sleeping pangs awake-and-but away" (Confound me if I know what next to say). "Lo Hope reviving re-expands her wings," And Master G-recites what Doctor Busby sings! "If mighty things with small we may compare," (Translated from the grammar for the fair!) Dramatic "spirit drives a conquering car," And burn'd poor Moscow like a tub of " tar.' "This spirit Wellington has shown in Spain," To furnish melodrames for Drury Lane. "Another Marlborough points to Blenheim's story," And George and I will dramatise it for ye. "In arts and sciences our isle hath shone" (This deep discovery is mine alone). "Oh British poesy, whose powers inspire" My verse or I'm a fool-and Fame's a liar, "Thee we invoke, your sister arts implore' With "smiles," and "lyres," and "pencils," and much more. [Cupid" These, if we win the Graces, too, we gain Disgraces, too! "inseparable train !" "Three who have stolen their witching airs from (You all know what I mean, unless you're stupid): "Harmonious throng" that I have kept in petto, Now to produce in a "divine sestetto"!! "While Poesy," with these delightful doxies, "Sustains her part" in all the "upper" boxes! "Thus lifted gloriously, you'll soar along," Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; "Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play" (For this last line George had a holiday). "Old Drury never, never soar'd so high," So says the manager, and so say I. [pride;" "But hold, you say, this self-complacent boast; Is this the poem which the public lost? "True-true-that lowers at once our mounting But lo!the papers print what you deride. ""Tis ours to look on you-you hold the prize," 'Tis twenty guineas, as they advertize! "A double blessing your rewards impart' VERSES FOUND IN A SUMMER HOUSE AT WHEN Dryden's fool, "unknowing what he sought," Did modern swains, possess'd of Cymon's powers, Th' offended guests would not, with blushing, see Hail thou! who on my birth bestow'd Those boons to all that know thee known; Yet better I sustain thy load, For now I bear the weight alone. I would not one fond heart should share Thy future ills shall press in vain: Yet even that pain was some relief; Retards, but never counts the hour. In joy I've sigh'd to think thy flight But could not add a night to woe; For then, however drear and dark, To prove thee-not Eternity. One scene even thou canst not deform; And I can smile to think how weak Thine efforts shortly shall be shown, When all the vengeance thou canst wreak Must fall upon-a nameless stone. morning at her quondam lover's apartments. His Lordship was from home; but finding 'Vathek' on the table, the lady wrote in the first page of the volume the words 'Remember me!' Byron immediately wrote under the ominous warning these two stanzas."-MEDWIN.] TRANSLATION OF A ROMAIC LOVE SONG. AH! Love was never yet without Which rends my heart with ceaseless sigh, Without one friend to hear my woe, Birds, yet in freedom, shun the net Which Love around your haunts hath set; Your hearts shall burn, your hopes expire. A bird of free and careless wing Who ne'er have loved, and loved in vain, In flattering dreams I deem'd thee mine; My light of life! ah, tell me why And art thou changed, and canst thou hate? My curdling blood, my madd'ning brain, And still thy heart, without partaking To dream of joy and wake to sorrow What must they feel whom no false vision, As if a dream alone had charm'd? Ah! sure such grief is fancy's scheming, And all thy change can be but dreaming! ON BEING ASKED WHAT WAS THE "ORIGIN THE "Origin of Love!"-Ah, why And shouldst thou seek his end to know: REMEMBER HIM, WHOM PASSION'S POWER. When neither fell, though both were loved. That yielding breast, that melting eye, Oh let me feel that all I lost But saved thee all that conscience fears; To spare the vain remorse of years. Yet think of this when many a tongue, Think that, whate'er to others, thou I bless thy purer soul even now, Even now, in midnight solitude. Oh, God! that we had met in time, Our hearts as fond, thy hand more free; Far may thy days, as heretofore, This heart, alas! perverted long, Then to the things whose bliss or woe, Thy soul from long seclusion pure; Since not by Virtue shed in vain, My frenzy drew from eyes so dear; For me they shall not weep again. Though long and mournful must it be, The thought that we no more may meet; Yet I deserve the stern decree, And almost deem the sentence sweet. Still, had I loved thee less, my heart It felt not half so much to part, As if its guilt had made thee mine. 1813. ["Among the many gay hours we passed together in the spring of 1813, I remember particularly the wild flow of his spirits one evening, when we had accompanied Mr. Rogers home from some early assembly. It happened that our host had just received a presentation copy of a volume of poems, written professedly in imitation of the old English writers, and containing, like many of these models, a good deal that was striking and beautiful, mixed up with much that was trifling, fantastic, and absurd. In vain did Mr. Rogers, in justice to the author, endeavour to direct our attention to some of the beauties of the work. In this sort of hunt through the volume, we at length lighted on the discovery that our host, in addition to his sincere approbation of some of its contents, had also the motive of gratitude for standing by its author, as one of the poems was a warm and, I need not add, welldeserved panegyric on himself. The opening line of the poem was, as well as I can recollect, When Rogers o'er this labour bent:' and Lord Byron undertook to read it aloud; but he found it impossible to get beyond the first two words. TO THOMAS MOORE. WRITTEN THE EVENING BEFORE HIS VISIT TO MR. LEIGH HUNT IN HORSEMONGER-LANE GAOL, MAY 19. 1813. Oн you, who in all names can tickle the town, Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Brown,For hang me if I know of which you may most brag, Your Quarto two-pounds, or your Two-penny Post Bag; But now to my letter-to yours 't is an answer— And for Sotheby's Blues have deserted Sam Rogers; [First published, 1830.] Our laughter had now increased to such a pitch that nothing could restrain it. Two or three times he began; but no sooner had the words When Rogers' passed his lips, than our fit burst forth afresh,- till even Mr. Rogers himself, with all his feeling of our injustice, found it impossible not to join us. A day or two after, Lord Byron sent me the following:'My dear Moore, 'When Rogers' must not see the enclosed, which I send for your perusal. — MOORE.] ? [The reader who wishes to understand the full force of this scandalous insinuation is referred to Muretus's notes on a celebrated poem of Catullus, entitled In Cesarem; but consisting, in fact, of savagely scornful abuse of the favourite Mamurra: "Quis hoc potest videre? quis potest pati, IMPROMPTU, IN REPLY TO A FRIEND. WHEN, from the heart where Sorrow sits, Her dusky shadow mounts too high, And o'er the changing aspect flits, And clouds the brow, or fills the eye; Heed not that gloom, which soon shall sink: My thoughts their dungeon know too well; Back to my breast the wanderers shrink, And droop within their silent cell. 1 September, 1813. SONNET, TO GENEVRA. THINE eyes' blue tenderness, thy long fair hair, And the wan lustre of thy features. - caught From contemplation - where serenely wrought, Seems Sorrow's softness charm'd from its despair — Have thrown such speaking sadness in thine air, That—but I know thy blessed bosom fraught With mines of unalloy'd and stainless thought – I should have deem'd thee doom'd to earthly care. With such an aspect, by his colours blent, When from his beauty-breathing pencil born, (Except that thou hast nothing to repent) The Magdalen of Guido saw the morn— Such seem'st thou - but how much more excellent! With nought Remorse can claim —nor Virtue scorn. December 17. 1813. 2 SONNET, TO THE SAME. THY cheek is pale with thought, but not from woe, At once such majesty with sweetness blending, December 17. 1813. [These verses are said to have dropped from the Poet's pen, to excuse a transient expression of melancholy which overclouded the general gaiety. It was impossible to observe his interesting countenance, expressive of a dejection belonging neither to his rank, his age, nor his success, without feeling an indefinable curiosity to ascertain whether it had a deeper cause than habit or constitutional temperament. It was obviously of a degree incalculably more serious than that alluded to by Prince Arthur 'I remember when I was in France Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, Only for wantonness.' But, howsoever derived, this, joined to Lord Byron's air of mingling in amusements and sports as if he contemned them, and felt that his sphere was far above the frivolous crowd which surrounded him, gave a strong effect of colouring to a FROM THE PORTUGUESE. "TU MI CHAMAS." IN moments to delight devoted, "My life!" with tenderest tone, you cry; Dear words on which my heart had doted, If youth could neither fade nor die. To death even hours like these must roll, Ah! then repeat those accents never; Or change" my life!" into "my soul ! Which, like my love, exists for ever. ANOTHER VERSION. You call me still your life.-Oh! change the word. THE DEVIL'S DRIVE; THE Devil return'd to hell by two, "And," quoth he, " I'll take a drive. I walk'd in the morning, I'll ride to-night; In darkness my children take most delight, And I'll see how my favourites thrive. "And what shall I ride in ?" quoth Lucifer then"If I follow'd my taste, indeed, I should mount in a waggon of wounded men, But these will be furnish'd again and again, To see my manor as much as I may, And watch that no souls shall be poach'd away. "I have a state-coach at Carlton House, A chariot in Seymour Place; But they're lent to two friends, who make me amends By driving my favourite pace : And they handle their reins with such a grace, I have something for both at the end of their race. "So now for the earth to take my chance." And rested his hoof on a turnpike road, 2 ["Redde some Italian, and wrote two sonnets. I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise- and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions." - Byron Diary, 1813.1 3 ["I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called The Devil's Drive,' the notion of which I took from Porson's Devil's Walk.' - Byron Diary, 1812. "Of this strange, wild poem," says Moore," the only copy that Lord Byron, I believe, ever wrote, he presented to Lord Holland. Though with a good deal of vigour and imagination, it is, for the most part, rather clumsily executed, wanting the point and condensation of those clever verses of Mr. Coleridge, which Lord Byron, adopting a notion long prevalent, has attributed to Professor Porson."] But first as he flew, I forgot to say, To look upon Leipsic plain; And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare, Nor his work done half as well: For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead, But the softest note that soothed his ear Was the sound of a widow sighing : And the sweetest sight was the icy tear, Which horror froze in the blue eye clear Of a maid by her lover lying— As round her fell her long fair hair; But the Devil has reach'd our cliffs so white, If his eyes were good, he but saw by night But he made a tour, and kept a journal And he sold it in shares to the Men of the Row, The Devil first saw, as he thought, the Mail, So instead of a pistol he cock'd his tail, So he sat him on his box again, And bade him have no fear, But be true to his club and stanch to his rein, "Next to seeing a lord at the council board, The Devil gat next to Westminster, And he turn'd to "the room" of the Commons; But he heard, as he purposed to enter in there, That "the Lords" had received a summons; The Lord Westmoreland certainly silly, [I cannot conceive how the Fault has got about; but so it is. It is too farouche; but truth to say, my sallies are not very playful."-Lord Byron to Mr. Moore, March 12 1814.] And he saw the tears in Lord Eldon's eyes, In spite of his prayers and his prophecies; WINDSOR POETICS. Lines composed on the occasion of his Royal Highness the STANZAS FOR MUSIC. 2 I SPEAK not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name, cease? Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt! With thee by my side, than with worlds at our feet. May, 1814. ADDRESS INTENDED TO BE RECITED AT THE CALEDONIAN MEETING. WHO hath not glow'd above the page where fame Hath fix'd high Caledon's unconquer'd name; The mountain-land which spurn'd the Roman chain, And baffled back the fiery-crested Dane, 2 ["Thou hast asked me for a song, and I enclose you an experiment, which has cost me something more than trouble, and is, therefore, less likely to be worth your taking any in your proposed setting. Now, if it be so, throw it into the fire without phrase."-Lord Byron to Mr. Moore, May 10. 1814.] |