Your worth a lasting love insures,
Unfettered in its scope;

From smooth deceit and terror sprung,
With aspect fair and honeyed tongue,
Let Adulation wait on kings;

With joy elate, by snares beset,

We, we, my friends, can ne'er forget

"Friendship is Love without his wings!"

Fictions and dreams inspire the bard
Who rolls the epic song;

Friendship and Truth be

To me no bays belong;

my

reward

If laurelled Fame but dwells with lies,
Me the enchantress ever flies,

Whose heart and not whose fancy sings;

Simple and young, I dare not feign;
Mine be the rude yet heartfelt strain,

66

Friendship is Love without his wings!"

THE PRAYER OF NATURE.*

[WRITTEN DECEMBER 29, 1806.]

FATHER of Light! great God of Heaven!
Hear'st thou the accents of despair?

*[It is difficult to conjecture for what reason these stanzas, which surpass any thing that Byron had yet written, were not included in the publication of 1807. Written when the author was not nineteen years of age, "this remarkable poem shows," says Moore, "how early the struggle between natural piety and doubt began in his mind."]

Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?
Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?

Father of Light, on thee I call!

Thou see'st my soul is dark within; Thou who canst mark the sparrow's fall, Avert from me the death of sin.

No shrine I seek, to sects unknown;
Oh point to me the path of truth!
Thy dread omnipotence I own;

Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth.

Let bigots rear a gloomy fane,

Let superstition hail the pile,

Let priests, to spread their sable reign,
With tales of mystic rights beguile.

Shall man confine his Maker's sway
To Gothic domes of mouldering stone?
Thy temple is the face of day;

Earth, ocean, heaven thy boundless throne.

Shall man condemn his race to hell,
Unless they bend in pompous form?

Tell us that all, for one who fell,
Must perish in the mingling storm?

Shall each pretend to reach the skies,
Yet doom his brother to expire,
Whose soul a different hope supplies,

Or doctrines less severe inspire?

Shall these, by creeds they can't expound,
Prepare a fancied bliss or woe?
Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground,
Their great Creator's purpose know?

Shall those, who live for self alone,
Whose years float on in daily crime ·
Shall they by Faith for guilt atone,

And live beyond the bounds of Time?

Father! no prophet's laws I seek,
Thy laws in Nature's works appear;
I own myself corrupt and weak,

Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear!

Thou, who canst guide the wandering star Through trackless realms of æther's space; Who calm'st the elemental war,

Whose hand from pole to pole I trace:

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 doomed 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.

TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ.*

"Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.".

-HOR.

DEAR Long, in this sequestered scene,
While all around in slumber lie,
The joyous days which ours have been

Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye;

* [This gentleman, who was with Byron both at Harrow and Cambridge, entered the Guards, and served in the expedition to Copenhagen. He was drowned in 1809, when on his way to join the army in the Peninsula; the transport in which he sailed being run down in the night by another of the convoy. "Long's father," says Byron," wrote to me to write his son's epitaph. I promised but I had not the heart to complete it. He was such a good, amiable being as rarely remains long in this world; with talent and accomplishments, too, to make him the more regretted." Diary, 1821.]

Thus if amidst the gathering storm,
While clouds the darkened 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 yield 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, Where smiling Youth delights to dwell, And hearts with early rapture swell; If frowning Age, with cold control, Confines the current of the soul,