If once diminished

Love's reign is finished

Then part in friendship,—and bid goodnight.*

V.

So shall Affection

To recollection

The dear connection

Bring back with joy:

You had not waited
Till, tired or hated,
Your passions sated
Began to cloy.
Your last embraces
Leave no cold traces
The same fond faces

As through the past;

And eyes, the mirrors

Of your sweet errors

Reflect but rapture - not least though last.

VI.

True, separations

Ask more than patience;

What desperations

From such have risen!

* [V. L. — “One last embrace, then, and bid good-night."]

But yet remaining,
What is 't but chaining

Hearts which, once waning,

Beat 'gainst their prison?
Time can but cloy love,
And use destroy love:
The winged boy, Love,
Is but for boys

You'll find it torture

Though sharper, shorter,

To wean, and not wear out your joys.

1819.

ON MY WEDDING DAY.

HERE's a happy new year! but with reason
I beg you'll permit me to say ·

Wish me many returns of the season,
But as few as you please of the day.

Jan. 2, 1820.

EPITAPH FOR WILLIAM PITT.

WITH death doomed to grapple

Beneath this cold slab, he

Who lied in the Chapel

Now lies in the Abbey.

January, 1820

EPIGRAM.

IN digging up your bones, Tom Paine,

Will. Cobbett has done well:

You visit him on earth again,

He'll visit you in hell.

January, 1820.

STANZAS.

WHEN a man hath no freedom to fight for at home, Let him combat for that of his neighbors;

Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome, And get knocked on the head for his labors.

To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.

November, 1820.

EPIGRAM.

THE world is a bundle of hay,

Mankind are the asses who pull;

Each tugs it a different way,

And the greatest of all is John Bull.

THE CHARITY BALL.

WHAT matter the pangs of a husband and father,
If his sorrows in exile be great or be small,
So the Pharisee's glories around her she gather,
And the saint patronizes her "charity ball!"
a heart which, though faulty, was

What matters

feeling,

Be driven to excesses which once could appall That the sinner should suffer is only fair dealing, As the saint keeps her charity back for "the ball!"*

EPIGRAM,

ON THE BRAZIERS' COMPANY HAVING RESOLVED TO PRESENT AN ADDRESS TO QUEEN CAROLINE.†

THE braziers, it seems, are preparing to pass
An address, and present it themselves all in brass;
A superfluous pageant-for, by the Lord Harry!
They'll find where they're going much more than
they carry.‡

These lines were written on reading in the newspapers, that Lady Byron had been patroness of a ball in aid of some charity at Hinckley.

† [The procession of the Braziers to Brandenburgh House was one of the fooleries of the time of Queen Caroline's trial.] [There is an epigram for you, is it not?-worthy

Of Wordsworth, the grand metaquizzical poet,
A man of vast merit, though few people know it ;
The perusal of whom (as I told you at Mestri)

I owe,

in great part, to my passion for pastry."

Byron's Letters, January 22, 1821.]

EPIGRAM ON MY WEDDING DAY.

TO PENELOPE.

THIS day, of all our days, has done

The worst for me and you:
"Tis just six years since we were one,
And five since we were two.

January 2, 1821.

ON MY THIRTY-THIRD BIRTH-DAY.

JANUARY 22, 1821.*

THROUGH life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three and thirty.

What have these years left to me?
Nothing

except thirty-three.

* [In Byron's MS. Diary of the preceding day, the following entry:-"To-morrow is my birth-day- that is to say, at twelve o' the clock, midnight; i. e. in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!!- and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose.

*

*

It is three minutes past twelve-''Tis the middle of night by the castle-clock,' and I am now thirty-three!

but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done."]