The works of lord Byron

The degradation of our vaunted stage? Heavens! is all sense of shame, and talent gone?

Have we no living bard of merit? - none?
Awake,GEORGE COLMAN, CUMBERLAND awake!
Ring the alarum-bell, let folly quake!
Oh SHERIDAN! if aught can move thy pen,
Let Comedy resume her throne again,
Abjure the mummery of German schools,
Leave new Pizarros to translating fools;
Give, as thy last memorial to the age,
One classic drama, and reform the stage.
Gods! o'er those boards shall Folly rear
her head

Where GARRICK trod, and KEMBLE lives to tread?

On those shall Farce display buffoonery's mask,

And bless the promise which his form

displays;

While Gayton bounds before the enraptured looks

Of hoary marquises and stripling dukes:
Let high-born letchers eye the lively Presle
Twirl her light limbs that spurn the need-
less veil:

Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow,
Wave the white arm and point the pliant toe
Collini trill her love-inspiring song,
Strain her fair neck and charm the list-
ening throng!

Raise not your scythe, suppressors of our vice!

Reforming Saints, too delicately nice!
By whose decrees, our sinful souls to save,
No sunday-tankards foam, no barbers shave,
And beer undrawn and beards unmown
display

And HOOKE conceal his heroes in a cask?
Shall sapient managers new scenes produce
From CHERRY, SKEFFINGTON, and Mother Your holy reverence for the sabbath-day.

bour's spouse.

Of piteous ruin, which ourselves have made: Talk not to us, ye starving sons of trade! In Plenty's sunshine Fortune's minions bask, Nor think of Poverty, except "en masque," When for the night some lately titled ass Appears the beggar which his grandsire was. The curtain dropp'd, the gay Burletta o'er, The audience take their turn upon the floor; Now round the room the circling dow'gers

sweep, Now in loose waltz the thin-clad daughters leap:

The last display the free, unfetter'd limb: The first in lengthen'd line majestic swim, With art the charms which Nature could Those for Hibernia's lusty sons repair

not spare; These after husbands wing their eager flight,

Nor leave much mystery for the nuptial

night.

Oh! blest retreats of infamy and ease! Where, all forgotten but the power to please,

Each maid may give a loose to genial

thought,

Each swain may teach new systems, or be taught:

There the blithe youngster, just return'd from Spain,

Cuts the light pack, or calls the rattling main;

The jovial Caster's set, and seven's the nick,
Or-done!-a thousand on the coming trick!
If mad with loss, existence 'gins to tire,
And all your hope or wish is to to expire,
Here's POWELL's pistol ready for your life,
And, kinder still, a PAGET for your wife.
Fit consummation of an earthly race
Begun in folly, ended in disgrace,
While none but menials o'er the bed of death,
Wash thy red wounds, or watch thy waver-
ing breath;

Traduced by liars, and forgot by all,
The mangled victim of a drunken brawl,
To live like CLODIUS, and like FALKLAND fall.

Truth! rouse some genuine Bard, and guide his hand To drive this pestilence from out the land. Even I-least thinking of a thoughtless throng,

Just skill'd to know the right and chuse the wrong, Freed at that age when Reason's shield is lost To fight my course through Passion's countless host,

Whom every path of pleasure's flowery way Has lured in turn, and all have led astrayE'en I must raise my voice, e'en I must feel Such scenes, such men, destroy the public weal;

Altho' some kind, censorious friend will say, "What art thou better, meddling fool, than they?"

And every brother-rake will smile to see
That miracle, a Moralist in me.
No matter when some Bard, in virtue
strong,

GIFFORD perchance, shall raise the chasten-
ing song,
Then sleep my pen for ever! and my voice
Be only heard to hail him and rejoice;
Rejoice,and yield my feeble praise; though I
May feel the lash that virtue must apply.

As for the smaller fry, who swarm in shoals,

From silly HAFIZ up to simple BOWLES, Why should we call them from their dark abode,

What harm? in spite of every critic elf, Sir T. may read his stanzas, to himself; MILES ANDREWS still his strength in couplets try,

And live in prologues,though his dramas die. Lords too are Bards: such things at times befal,

And 'tis some praise in Peers to write at all. Yet, did or taste or reason sway the times, Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes?

RoscoMMON! SHEFFIELD! with your spirits fled,

No future laurels deck a noble head;
No Muse will cheer, with renovating smile,
The paralytic puling of CARLISLE:
The puny schoolboy and his early lay
Men pardon, if his follies pass away;
But who forgives the senior's ceaseless verse,
Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes

grow worse? What heterogeneous honours deck the Peer! Lord, rhymester, petit-maitre, pamphleteer! So dull in youth, so drivelling in his age, His scenes alone had damn'd our sinking stage:

But Managers for once cried hold, enough!" Nor drugg'd their audience with the tragic stuff.

Yet at their judgment let his Lordship laugh, And case his volumes in congenial calf: Yes! doff that covering where Moroces shines,

And hang a calf-skin on those recreant lines.

With you, ye Druids! rich in native lead, Who daily scribble for your daily bread, With you I war not: GIFFORD's heavy hand Has crush'd, without remorse, your numerous band.

On "all the Talents" vent your venal spleen, Want your defence, let Pity be your screen. Let Monodies on Fox regale your crew, And Melville's Mantle prove a blanket too! One common Lethe waits each hapless bard, And peace be with you! 'tis your best reward. Such damning fame as Dunciads only give Could bid your lines beyond a morning live;

But now at once your fleeting labours close, With names of greater note in blest repose. Far be't from me unkindly to upbraid The lovely Rosa's prose in masquerade, Whose strains, the faithful echoes of her mind,

Leave wondering comprehension far behind. Though CRUSCA's bards no more our journals fill,

In broad St. Giles's or in Tottenham Road?
Or (since some men of fashion nobly dare Some stragglers skirmish round their co-
To scrawl in verse) from Bond-street,
the Square?
If things of ton their harmless lays indite,
Most wisely doom'd to shun the public sight,

lumns still. Last of the howling host which once was BELL'S,

MATILDA suivels yet, and Hafız yells;

And MERRY's metaphors appear anew,
Chain'd to the signature of O. P. Q.

When some brisk youth, the tenant of
a stall,

Employs a pen less pointed than his awl,
Leaves his snug shop, forsakes his store of
shoes,

St. Crispin quits, and cobbles for the Muse,
Heavens! how the vulgar stare! how
crowds applaud!
How ladies read, and literati laud!
If chance some wicked wag should pass his
jest,
Tis sheer ill-nature; don't the world know
best?

Genius must guide when wits admire the
rhyme,

And CAPEL LOFFT declares 'tis quite sublime.
Hear, then, ye happy sons of needless trade!
Swains! quit the plough, resign the useless
spade:

Lo! BURNS and BLOOMFIELD,nay,a greater far,
GIFFORD was born beneath an adverse star,
Forsook the labours of a servile state,
Stemm❜d the rude storm and triumph'd over
Fate:

Unless, perchance, from his cold bier she

turns,

To deck the turf that wraps her minstrel,
BURNS!

No! tho' contempt hath mark'd the spuri-
ous brood,

The race who rhyme from folly,or for food ;
Yet still some genuine sons 'tis hers to boast,
Who, least affecting, still affect the most;
Feel as they write, and write but as they
feel-

Bear witness GIFFORD, SOTHEBY, MAONEIL.

"Why slumbers GIFFORD?" once was ask'd in vain : Why slumbers GIFFORD? let us ask again; Are there no follies for his pen to purge? Are there no fools whose backs demand the scourge?

Are there no sins for Satire's Bard to greet? Stalks not gigantic Vice in every street? Shall peers or princes tread Pollution's path, And 'scape alike theLaw's and Muse's wrath? Nor blaze with guilty glare through future time, Then why no more? ifPhœbus smiled on you, Eternal beacons of consummate crime? BLOOMFIELD! Why not on brother Nathan Arouse thee, GIFFORD! be thy promise claim'd,

too?

Him too the Mania, not the Muse, has seized; | Make bad men better, or at least ashamed.
Not inspiration, but a mind diseased:
And now no boor can seek his last abode,
No common be enclosed, without an ode.
Oh! since increased refinement deigns to
smile

Unhappy WHITE! while life was in its

spring.

And thy young muse just waved her joyous
wing,

The spoiler came, and all thy promise fair
Has sought the grave, to sleep for ever there.
Oh! what a noble heart was here undone,
When Science self destroyed her favourite
son!

Yes! she too much indulged thy fond pursuit,
She sow'd the seeds, but death has reap'd
the fruit.

'Twas thine own Genius gave the final blow, And help'd to plant the wound that laid

thee low:

So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again,

View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart:

Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel,

While the same plumage that had warm'd

his nest

That strain'd invention, ever on the wing,
Alone impels the modern bard to sing:
'Tis true that all who rhyme, nay, all who

write,

trite;

Yet truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires,

Whose gilded cymbals, more adorn'd than
clear,

The eye delighted, but fatigued the ear,
In show the simple lyre could once surpass,

Shrink from that fatal word to Genius-But now,worn down, appear in native brass;
While all his strain of hovering sylphs
around,
Evaporate in similies and sound:
Him let them shun, with him let tinsel die:
False glare attracts,but more offends the eye.

And decorate the verse herself inspires:
This fact in Virtue's name let CRABBE attest-
Though nature's sternest painter, yet the best.

The glorious spirit of the Grecian muse,
Though soft the echo, scorn a borrow'd tone:
Resign Achaia's lyre, and strike your own.

Yet let them not to vulgar WORDSWORTH

stoop,
The meanest object of the lowly group,
Whose verse,of all but childish prattle void,
Seems blessed harmony to LAMB and LLOVE
Let them – but hold, my muse, nor dare to
teach

A strain far, far beyond thy humble reach;
The native genius with their feeling givea
Will point the path, and peal their notes
to heaven.

And thou, too, SCOTT! resign to minstrels
rude

The wilder Slogan of a Border-fend:
Let others spin their meagre lines for hire-
Enough for genius if itself inspire!
Let SOUTHEY sing, although his teeming

muse,

Prolific every spring, be too profuse;
Let simple WORDSWORTH chime his childish

verse,

And brotherCOLERIDGE lull the babe at nurse;
Let spectre-mongering Lewis aim, at most,
To rouse the galleries, or to raise a ghost;
Let MOORE be lew'd; let STRANGFORD steal
from MOORE,

And swear that CAMOENS sang such notes
of yore;

Let HAYLEY hobble on, MONTGOMERY rave,
And godly GRAHAM chaunt a stupid stave;
Let sonnetteering BowLES his strains refine,
And whine and whimper to the fourteenth
line;

Let STOTT, CARLISLE, Matilda, and the rest
Of Grub-street, and of Grosvenor-Place the
best,

Scrawl on, 'till death release us from the strain,

Or common-sense assert her rights again: But thou, with powers that mock the aid of praise,

Shouldst leave to humbler bards ignoble lays:

Thy country's voice, the voice of all the Nine, Demand a hallow'd harp-that harp is thine. Say! will not Caledonia's annals yield Let these, or such as these, with just The glorious record of some nobler field,

applause,

Restore the Muse's violated laws:
But not in flimsy Darwin's pompous chime,
That mighty master of unmeaning rhyme;

Than the vile foray of a plundering clan, Whose proudest deeds disgrace the name of man?

Or Marmion's acts of darkness, fitter food

or outlaw'd SHERWOOD's tales of Robin | To crown the bards that haunt her classic Hood? grove,

cotland! still proudly claim thy native Where RICHARDS wakes a genuine poet's fires,

Bard,

nd be thy praise his first, his best reward! And modern Britons justly praise their sires. et not with thee alone his name should live, ut own the vast renown a world can give; e known, perchance, when Albion is no more,

For me, who thus unask'd have dared

to tell

My country what her sons should know too well,

Zeal for her honour bade me here engage
The host of idiots that infest her age.
No just applause her honour'd name shall
lose,

As first in freedom, dearest to the Muse.
Oh, would thy bards but emulate thy fame,
And rise more worthy, Albion, of thy name!
What Athens was in science, Rome in power,
What Tyre appear'd in her meridian hour,
'Tis thine at once, fair Albion, to have been,
Earth's chief dictatress, Ocean's mighty
queen:

But Rome decay'd, and Athens strew'd the plain,

And Tyre's proud piers lie shatter'd in the main:

Like these thy strength may sink in ruin hurl'd,

And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world. But let me cease, and dread Cassandra's fate, With warning ever scoff'd at, till too late; To themes less lofty still my lay confine, And urge thy bards to gain a name like thine.

Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest, The senate's oracles, the people's jest! Still hear thy motley orators dispense The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense, While CANNING's colleagues hate him for his wit,

And old dame PORTLAND fills the place of PITT.

Yet once again adieu! ere this the sail That wafts me hence is shivering in the gale; And Afric's coast and Calpe's adverse height, And Stamboul's minarets must greet my sight:

Thence shall I stray through beauty's
native clime,
Where Kaff is clad in rocks, and crown'd
with snows sublime.
But should I back return, no letter'd rage
Shall drag my common-place-book on the
stage:

Let vain VALENTIA rival luckless CARR,
And equal him whose work he sought to mar;
Let ABERDEEN and ELGIN still pursue
The shade of fame through regions of Virtu;
Waste useless thousands on their Phidian
freaks,

Misshapen monuments and maim'd antiques ;

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