Thou, who in wisdom placed me here,
Who, when thou wilt, can take me hence,
Ah! whilst I tread this earthly sphere,
Extend to me thy wide defence.

To Thee, my God, to Thee I call!
Whatever weal or woe betide,
By thy command I rise or fall,
In thy protection I confide.

If, when this dust to dust's restored, My soul shall float on airy wing, How shall thy glorious name adored Inspire her feeble voice to sing!

But, if this fleeting spirit share

With clay the grave's eternal bed, While life yet throbs, I raise my prayer, Though doom'd no more to quit the dead.

To Thee I breathe my humble strain, Grateful for all thy mercies past, And hope, my God, to thee again This erring life may fly at last.

December 29. 1806. [First published, 1830.]

TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ. 1
Nil ego contulerim jocundo sanus amico.- HOR.
DEAR LONG, in this sequester'd scene,
While all around in slumber lie,
The joyous days which ours have been
Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye;
Thus if amidst the gathering storm,
While clouds the darken'd noon deform,
Yon heaven assumes a varied glow,
I hail the sky's celestial bow,
Which spreads the sign of future peace,
And bids the war of tempests cease.
Ah! though the present brings but pain,
I think those days may come again;
Or if, in melancholy mood,
Some lurking envious fear intrude,
To check my bosom's fondest thought,
And interrupt the golden dream,
I crush the fiend with malice fraught,
And still indulge my wonted theme.
Although we ne'er again can trace,

In Granta's vale, the pedant's lore;
Nor through the groves of Ida chase,
Our raptured visions as before,
Though Youth has flown on rosy pinion,
And Manhood claims his stern dominion —
Age will not every hope destroy,
But yieid some hours of sober joy.

Yes, I will hope that Time's broad wing Will shed around some dews of spring: But if his scythe must sweep the flowers Which bloom among the fairy bowers,

[This young gentleman, who was with Lord Byron both at Harrow and Cambridge, afterwards entered the Guards, and served with distinction in the expedition to Copenhagen. He was drowned early in 1809, when on his way to join the army in the Peninsula; the transport in which he sailed being run foul of in the night by another of the convoy. Long's

Where smiling Youth delights to dwell,
And hearts with early rapture swell;
If frowning Age, with cold control,
Confines the current of the soul,
Congeals the tear of Pity's eye,
Or checks the sympathetic sigh,
Or hears unmoved misfortune's groan,
And bids me feel for self alone;
Oh may my bosom never learn

To soothe its wonted heedless flow;
Still, still despise the censor stern,

But ne'er forget another's woe. Yes, as you knew me in the days O'er which Remembrance yet delays, Still may I rove, untutor'd, wild, And even in age at heart a child.

Though now on airy visions borne,

To you my soul is still the same. Oft has it been my fate to mourn,

And all my former joys are tame. But, hence! ye hours of sable hue! Your frowns are gone, my sorrows o'er: By every bliss my childhood knew,

I'll think upon your shade no more. Thus, when the whirlwind's rage is past, And caves their sullen roar enclose, We heed no more the wintry blast, When lull'd by zephyr to repose.

Full often has my infant Muse

Attuned to love her languid lyre;
But now without a theme to choose,

The strains in stolen sighs expire.
My youthful nymphs, alas! are flown;
E- is a wife, and C a mother,
And Carolina sighs alone,

And Mary's given to another;
And Cora's eye, which roll'd on me,
Can now no more my love recall:
In truth, dear LONG, 't was time to flee;
For Cora's eye will shine on all.
And though the sun, with genial rays,
His beams alike to all displays,
And every lady's eye's a sun,
These last should be confined to one.
The soul's meridian don't become her,
Whose sun displays a general summer!
Thus faint is every former flame,
And passion's self is now a name.
As, when the ebbing flames are low,

The aid which once improved their light,
And bade them burn with fiercer glow,
Now quenches all their sparks in night;
Thus has it been with passion's fires,
As many a boy and girl remembers,
While all the force of love expires,
Extinguish'd with the dying embers.

But now, dear LONG, 't is midnight's noon, And clouds obscure the watery moon, Whose beauties I shall not rehearse, Described in every stripling's verse;

father," says Lord Byron, "wrote to me to write his ent epitaph. I promised but I had not the heart to compie He was such a good, amiable being as rarely rema in this world; with talent and accomplishments, too, to t him the more regretted." Byron Diary, 1821.]

TO A LADY. 2

OH! had my fate been join'd with thine,
As once this pledge appear'd a token,
These follies had not then been mine,
For then my peace had not been broken. 3

To thee these early faults I owe,

To thee, the wise and old reproving : They know my sins, but do not know

"T was thine to break the bonds of loving.

For once my soul, like thine, was pure, And all its rising fires could smother; But now thy vows no more endure, Bestow'd by thee upon another.

Perhaps his peace I could destroy,

And spoil the blisses that await him;

Yet let my rival smile in joy,

For thy dear sake I cannot hate him.

Ah! since thy angel form is gone,

My heart no more can rest with any; But what it sought in thee alone, Attempts, alas! to find in many.

Then fare thee well, deceitful maid!

'T were vain and fruitless to regret thee; Nor Hope, nor Memory yield their aid,

But Pride may teach me to forget thee.

Yet all this giddy waste of years,

This tiresome round of palling pleasures; These varied loves, these matron's fears,

These thoughtless strains to passion's measures

[The two friends were both passionately attached to Harrow; and sometimes made excursions thither together, to revive their school-boy recollections.]

2 [Mrs. Musters. See ante, p. 384.]

3["Our union would have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers-it would have joined lands broad and rich-it would have joined at least one heart, and two persons not ill matched in years (she is two years my elder), and-and-and-what has been the result?"- Byron Diary,

1821.]

["Our meetings," says Lord Byron, in 1822, "were stolen ones, and a gate leading from Mr. Chaworth's grounds to those of my mother was the place of our interviews. But the

I WOULD I WERE A CARELESS CHILD. I WOULD I were a careless child,

Still dwelling in my Highland cave, Or roaming through the dusky wild,

Or bounding o'er the dark blue wave; The cumbrous pomp of Saxon 5 pride

Accords not with the freeborn soul, Which loves the mountain's craggy side, And seeks the rocks where billows roll. Fortune! take back these cultured lands,

Take back this name of splendid sound!

I hate the touch of servile hands,

I hate the slaves that cringe around.

Place me along the rocks I love,

Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar;

I ask but this-again to rove

Through scenes my youth hath known before.

Few are my years, and yet I feel

The world was ne'er design'd for me: Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal

The hour when man must cease to be? Once I beheld a splendid dream, A visionary scene of bliss: Truth!-wherefore did thy hated beam Awake me to a world like this?

I loved - but those I loved are gone;
Had friends -my early friends are fled :
How cheerless feels the heart alone

When all its former hopes are dead!
Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;

Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul, The heart-the heart-is lonely still. 6

ardour was all on my side. I was serious; she was volatile: she liked me as a younger brother, and treated and laughed at me as a boy; she, however, gave me her picture, and that was something to make verses upon. Had I married her, perhaps the whole tenour of my life would have been different."] 5 Sassenach, or Saxon, a Gaelic word, signifying either Lowland or English.

6 [The "imagination all compact," which the greatest poet who ever lived has assigned as the distinguishing badge of his brethren, is in every case a dangerous gift. It exaggerates, indeed, our expectations, and can often hid its possessor hope, where hope is lost to reason; but the delusive pleasure arising from these visions of imagination resembles that of a child,

How dull! to hear the voice of those

Whom rank or chance, whom wealth or power, Have made, though neither friends nor foes, Associates of the festive hour. Give me again a faithful few,

In years and feelings still the same, And I will fly the midnight crew, Where boist'rous joy is but a name.

And woman, lovely woman! thou,
My hope, my comforter, my all!
How cold must be my bosom now,

When e'en thy smiles begin to pall!
Without a sigh would I resign

This busy scene of splendid woe, To make that calm contentment mine, Which virtue knows, or seems to know.

Fain would I fly the haunts of men-
I seek to shun, not hate mankind;
My breast requires the sullen glen,

Whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind.
Oh! that to me the wings were given
Which bear the turtle to her nest!
Then would I cleave the vault of heaven,
To flee away, and be at rest. 1

WHEN I ROVED A YOUNG HIGHLANDER.

WHEN I roved a young Highlander o'er the dark heath,

Yet it could not be love, for I knew not the name,What passion can dwell in the heart of a child? But still I perceive an emotion the same

As I felt, when a boy, on the crag-cover'd wild: One image alone on my bosom impress'd,

I loved my bleak regions, nor panted for new; And few were my wants, for my wishes were bless'd; And pure were my thoughts, for my soul was with you.

I arose with the dawn; with my dog as my guide,
From mountain to mountain I bounded along;
I breasted the billows of Dee's rushing tide,
And heard at a distance the Highlander's song:
At eve, on my heath-cover'd couch of repose,
No dreams, save of Mary, were spread to my view;
And warm to the skies my devotions arose,

For the first of my prayers was a blessing on you.

I left my bleak home, and my visions are gone;
The mountains are vanish'd, my youth is no more;
As the last of my race, I must wither alone,

And delight but in days I have witness'd before: Ah! splendour has raised, but embitter'd, my lot; More dear were the scenes which my infancy knew: Though my hopes may have fail'd, yet they are not forgot;

Though cold is my heart, still it lingers with you.

Or the mist of the tempest that gather'd below, 3 Untutor'd by science, a stranger to fear,

And rude as the rocks where my infancy grew, No feeling, save one, to my bosom was dear;

Need I say, my sweet Mary+, 'twas center'd in you?

whose notice is attracted by a fragment of glass to which a sun-beam has given momentary splendour. He hastens to the spot with breathless impatience, and finds the object of his curiosity and expectation is equally vulgar and worthless. Such is the man of quick and exalted powers of imagination. His fancy over-estimates the object of his wishes, and pleasure, fame, distinction, are alternately pursued, attained, and despised when in his power. Like the enchanted fruit in the palace of a sorcerer, the objects of his admiration lose their attraction and value as soon as they are grasped by the adventurer's hand, and all that remains is regret for the time lost in the chase, and astonishment at the hallucination under which it was undertaken. The disproportion between hope and possession, which is felt by all men, is thus doubled to those whom nature has endowed with the power of gilding a distant prospect by the rays of imagination. These reflections, though trite and obvious, are in a manner forced from us by the poetry of Lord Byron,- by the sentiments of weariness of life and enmity with the world which they so frequently express.and by the singular analogy which such sentiments hold with well-known incidents of his life.-SIR W. SCOTT.]

1" And I said, Oh! that I had wings like a dove; for then would I fly away, and be at rest."-Psalm lv. 6. This verse also constitutes a part of the most beautiful anthem in our language.

2 Morven, a lofty mountain in Aberdeenshire. "Gormal of snow," is an expression frequently to be found in Ossian.

3 This will not appear extraordinary to those who have been accustomed to the mountains. It is by no means uncommon, on attaining the top of Ben-e-vis, Ben-y-bourd, &c. to perceive, between the summit and the valley, clouds pouring down rain, and occasionally accompanied by lightning, while the spectator literally looks down upon the storm, perfectly secure from its effects.

4 [In Lord Byron's Diary for 1813, he says, "I have been thinking lately a good deaf of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at

That faintly resemble my Mary's in hue,

I think on the long flowing ringlets of gold,
The locks that were sacred to beauty, and you.

Yet the day may arrive when the mountains once more Shall rise to my sight in their mantles of snow: 7

an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day; Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to a Mr. Cockburn.' [Robert Cockburn, Esq. of Edinburgh.] And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions-to the horror of my mother, and the astonishment of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old), which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it."- Again, in January, 1s15, a few days after his marriage, in a letter to his friend Captain Hay, the poet thus speaks of his childish attachment: - Pray tell me more-or as much as you like, of your cousin Mary. I believe I told you our story some years ago. I was twentyseven a few days ago, and I have never seen her since we were children, and young children too; but I never forget her. nor ever can. You will oblige me with presenting her with my best respects, and all good wishes. It may seem ridica lous-but it is at any rate, I hope, not offensive to her sar hers-in me to pretend to recollect anything about her, at so early a period of both our lives, almost, if not quite, in o nurseries; but it was a pleasant dream, which she must pardon me for remembering. Is she pretty still? I have the most perfect idea of her person, as a child; but Time, I sup pose, has played the devil with us both."]

5 "Breasting the lofty surge."- SHAKSPEARE. The Dee is a beautiful river, which rises near Mar Lodge, and falls into the sea at New Aberdeen.

6 Colbleen is a mountain near the verge of the Highlands not far from the ruins of Dee Castle.

7 [In the spring of 1807, on recovering from a severe illars, Lord Byron had projected a visit to Scotland. The plan w not put into execution; but he thus adverts to it, in a letter dated in August, and addressed to his fair correspondent w

Southwell" On Sunday I set off for the Highlands. A friend of mine accompanies me in my carriage to Edinburgh. There we shall leave it, and proceed in a tandem through the western parts to Inverary, where we shall purchase shelties, to enable us to view places inaccessible to vehicular conveyances. On the coast we shall hire a vessel, and visit the most remarkable of the Hebrides, and, if we have time and favourable weather, mean to sail as far as Iceland, only three hundred miles from the northern extremity of Caledonia, to peep at Hecla. I mean to collect all the Erse traditions, poeins, &c.

And yet, while Beauty's praise is thine, Harmonious favourite of the Nine !

Repine not at thy lot.

Thy soothing lays may still be read,
When Persecution's arm is dead,

And critics are forgot.

Still I must yield those worthies merit,
Who chasten, with unsparing spirit,

Bad rhymes, and those who write them;
And though myself may be the next,
By critic sarcasm to be vext,

I really will not fight them. 1

Perhaps they would do quite as well
To break the rudely sounding shell
Of such a young beginner.
He who offends at pert nineteen,
Ere thirty may become, I ween,
A very harden'd sinner.

Now, Clare, I must return to you;
And, sure, apologies are due :

Accept, then, my concession.

In truth, dear Clare, in fancy's flight
I soar along from left to right!
My muse admires digression.

I think I said 't would be your fate
To add one star to royal state; -
May regal smiles attend you!
And should a noble monarch reign,
You will not seek his smiles in vain,
If worth can recommend you.

Yet since in danger courts abound,
Where specious rivals glitter round,
From snares may saints preserve you;
And grant your love or friendship ne'er
From any claim a kindred care,

But those who best deserve you!

Not for a moment may you stray
From truth's secure, unerring way!
May no delights decoy!
O'er roses may your footsteps move,
Your smiles be ever smiles of love,
Your tears be tears of joy!

Oh! if you wish that happiness
Your coming days and years may bless,
And virtues crown your brow;
Be still as you were wont to be,
Spotless as you 've been known to me,-
Be still as you are now. 2

article on Epistles, Odes, and other Poems, by Thomas Little, Esq."]

1 A bard (horresco referens) defied his reviewer to mortal combat. If this example becomes prevalent, our periodical censors must be dipped in the river Styx: for what else can secure them from the numerous host of their enraged assailants?

["Of all I have ever known, Clare has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of

And though some trifling share of praise,
To cheer my last declining days,

To me were doubly dear;
Whilst blessing your beloved name,
I'd waive at once a poet's fame,
To prove a prophet here.

LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE
CHURCHYARD OF HARROW. 5

SPOT of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mused the twilight hours away;
Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
But, ah! without the thoughts which then were
mine :

How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
Invite the bosom to recall the past,

And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,

When fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast!
And calm its cares and passions into rest,
Oft have I thought, 't would soothe my dying hour,— 't
If aught may soothe when life resigns her power,-
To know some humbler grave, some narrow cell,
Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell;
With this fond dream, methinks, 't were sweet to
die-

And here it linger'd, here my heart might lie;
Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose,
Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose;
For ever stretch'd beneath this mantling shade,
Press'd by the turf where once my childhood play'd;
Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I loved,
Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved;
Blest by the tongues that charm'd my youthful ear,
Mourn'd by the few my soul acknowledged here;
Deplored by those in early days allied,
And unremember'd by the world beside.

September 2. 1907.

[The "Lines written beneath an Elm at Harrow," wm the last in the little volume printed at Newark in 1807. The reader is referred to Mr. Moore's Notices, for earious m teresting particulars respecting the impression produced in Lord Byron's mind by the celebrated Critique of his juvenat

the leaven of bad passions. I do not speak from personal etperience only, but from all I have ever heard of her from others, during absence and distance.” —- Byron Diary, ¡×24) 3 [On losing his natural daughter, Allegra, în April, 1 Lord Byron sent her remains to be buried at Harme "where," he says, in a letter to Mr. Murray, "I once bogat to have laid my own." "There is," he adds, "a spot in be church-yard, near the footpath, on the brow of the hill lockigg towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey), where I used to sit for bein and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot, but ta I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better be deposited in the church;"— and it was so accordingly ]