TO A VAIN LADY. Ан, heedless girl! why thus disclose Of those who spoke but to beguile. Vain girl! thy ling'ring woes are nigh, If thou believ'st what striplings say: Oh, from the deep temptation fly, Nor fall the specious spoiler's prey. Dost thou repeat, in childish boast, The words man utters to deceive? Thy peace, thy hope, thy all is lost, If thou can'st venture to believe. While now amongst thy female peers Thou tell'st again the soothing tale, Canst thou not mark the rising sneers Duplicity in vain would veil ? These tales in secret silence hush, Nor make thyself the public gaze: What modest maid without a blush Recounts a flattering coxcomb's praise? Will not the laughing boy despise Her who relates each fond conceitWho, thinking Heaven is in her eyes, Yet cannot see the slight deceit ? For she who takes a soft delight These amorous nothings in revealing, Must credit all we say or write, While vanity prevents concealing. Cease, if you prize your beauty's reign! No jealousy bids me reprove: One, who is thus from nature vain, January 15, 1807. FAREWELL TO THE MUSE. THOU Power! who hast ruled me through infancy's days, Young offspring of Fancy, 't is time we should part; Then rise on the gale this the last of my lays, The coldest effusion which springs from my heart. This bosom, responsive to rapture no more, Shall hush thy wild notes, nor implore thee to sing; The feelings of childhood, which taught thee to soar, Are wafted far distant on Apathy's wing. Though simple the themes of my rude flowing Lyre, Yet even these themes are departed for ever; No more beams the eyes which my dream could inspire, My visions are flown, to return,-alas, never! When drain'd is the nectar which gladdens the bowl, How vain is the effort delight to prolong! When cold is the beauty which dwelt in my soul, What magic of Fancy can lengthen my song? Can the lips sing of Love in the desert alone, Of kisses and smiles which they now must resign? Or dwell with delight on the hours that are flown? Ah. no! for those hours can no longer be mine. Can they speak of the friends that I lived but to love? But how can my numbers in sympathy move On! Anne, your offences to me have been grievous; I thought from my wrath no atonement could save you; But woman is made to command and deceive us- I swore, in a transport of young indignation, TO THE SAME. Он say not, sweet Anne, that the Fates have decrees Your lover should bid you a lasting adieu, THY verse is "sad" enough, no doubt: A devilish deal more sad than witty! And much, alas! I think he needs it: Who, to his own misfortune, reads it. Thy rhymes, without the aid of magic, May once be read-but never after: Yet their effect's by no means tragic, Although by far too dull for laughter. If you would make us weep indeed, ON FINDING A FAN. IN one who felt as once he felt, The aid which once improved their light, Now quenches all their blaze in night. Thus has it been with passion's firesAs many a boy and girl remembersWhile every hope of love expires, Extinguish'd with the dying embers. The first, though not a spark survive, Some careful hand may teach to burn; The last, alas! can ne'er survive; No touch can bid its warmth return. Or, if it chance to wake again, Not always doom'd its heat to smother, 1807. TO AN OAK AT NEWSTEAD.* I left thee, my Oak, and, since that fatal hour, But thou wert not fated affection to share For who could suppose that a stranger would feel And still may thy branches their beauty display Oh! yet, if maturity's years may be thine, Though I shall lie low in the cavern of death, Remembrance still hallows the dust of the dead. "Which pye being open'd, they began to sing." (This old song and new simile holds good,) YOUNG Oak! when I planted thee deep in the ground, Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;- Lord Byron, on his first arrival at Newstead, in 1798, planted an oak in the garden, and nourished the fancy, that as the tree flourished so should ne. On revisiting the abbey, during Lord Grey de Ruthven's residence there, he found the oak choked up by weeds, and almost destroyed;--hence these lines. Shortly after Colonel Wildman, the present proprietor, took posses sion, he one day noticed it and said to the servant who was with him, "Here is a fine young oak; but it must be cut down as it grows in an improper place" I hope not, sir," replied the man; "for it's the one that my ord was so fond of, because he set it himself." The Colonel has, of course, raken every possible care of it. It is already inquired after, by strangers, as "The Byron Oak," and promises to share, in after times, the celebrity of Vakspeare's mulberry, and Pope's willow.-Moore. Explaining metaphysics to the nation- You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know, And be the only Blackbird in the dish; ↑ This "Dedication" was suppressed, in 1819, with Lord Byron's reluctant consent; but, shortly after his death, its existence became notorious, in o sequence of an article in the Westminster Review, generally ascribed to Sir John Hobhouse; and, for several years, the verses have been selling in he streets as a broadside. It could. Therefore, serve no purpose to exclude them on the present occasion.--Moore. And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob! IV. And Wordsworth, in a rather long "Excursion," (I think the quarto holds five hundred pages,) Has given a sample from the vasty version Of his new system to perplex the sages; 'Tis poetry-at least by his assertion, And may appear so when the dog-star rages- V. You-Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion To deem as a most logical conclusion, That Poesy has wreaths for you alone: There is a narrowness in such a notion, He deign'd not to belie his soul in songs, XI. Think'st thou, could he-the blind Old Man-arise Or be alive again--again all hoar With time and trials, and those helpless eyes, poor; Would he adore a sultan? he obey XII. Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant! Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for To lengthen fetters by another fix'd, ocean. The field is universal, and allows Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow: And offer poison long already mix'd. XIII. An orator of such set trash of phrase That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze XIV. A bungler even in its disgusting trade, And botching, patching, leaving still behind States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confined Cobbling at manacles for all mankind A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains, Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try With God and man's abhorrence for its gains. 'Gainst you the question with posterity. VIII. For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses, I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses, In giving to his brethren their full meed Of merit, and complaint of present days IX. He that reserves his laurels for posterity Being only injured by his own assertion; To-God knows where-for no one else can know. X. If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues, If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs, Wordsworth's place may be in the Customs-it is, I think, in that or the Excise-besides another at Lord Lonsdale's table, where this poetical charlatan and political parasite licks up the crumbs with a hardened alacrity; the converted Jacobin having long subsided into the clownish sycophant of the worst prejudices of the aristocracy. XV. If we may judge of matter by the mind, Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind, To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit, XVI. Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds, Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds Beneath the lie this State-thing breathed o'er thee- "Pale, but not cadaverous;"-Milton's two elder daughters are said to have robbed him of his books, besides cheating and plaguing him in the economy of his house, &c. &c. His feelings on such an outrage, both as a parent and a scholar, must have been singularly painful. Hayley compares him to Lear. See part third, Life of Milton, by W. Hayley (or Hailey as spelt in the edition before me.) Or, "Would he subside into a hackney Laureate-A scribbling, self-sold, soul-hired, scorn'd Iscariot?" I doubt if "Laureate" and "Iscariot" be good rhymes, but must say, as Bou Jonson did to Sylvester, who challenged him to rhyme with"I, John Sylvester, Lay with your sister." Jenson answered,-"I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife." Sylvester answer ed," That is not rhyme "No," said Ben Jonson; "but it is trace" XVII. Meantime-Sir Laureate-I proceed to dedicate, 'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue;" My politics as yet are all to educate: Apostasy 's so fashionable, too, To keep one creed's a task grown quite Herculean; Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian ?* Venice, September 16, 1818. FRAGMENT ON THE BACK OF THE POET'S MS. OF CANTO 1. I WOULD to heaven that I were so much clay, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) These, if we win the Graces, too, we gain "Three who have stolen their witching airs from Cupid" (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 says I. "But hold, you say, this self-complacent boast;" Is this the poem which the public lost? "True-true- that lowers at once our mounting pride;" But lo-the papers print what you deride. "A double blessing your rewards impart" I wish I had them, then, with all my heart. "Our twofold feeling owns its twofold cause," Why son and I both beg for your applause. "When in your fostering beams you bid us live," My next subscription list shall say how much you give October, 1812. PARENTHETICAL ADDRESS,† BY DR. PLAGIARY. Half stolen, with acknowledgments, to be spoken in an inarticulate voice by Master P. at the opening of the next new theatre.-Stolen parts marked with the inverted commas of quotation-thus "". "WHEN energising objects men pursue," Then Lord knows what is writ by Lord knows who. "A modest monologue you here survey," Hiss'd from the theatre the "other day," As if Sir Fretful wrote "the slumberous" verse, And gave his son "the rubbish" to rehearse. "Yet at the thing you'd never be amazed," Knew you the rumpus which the author raised; "Nor even here your smiles would be represt," Knew you these lines-the badness of the best. "Flame! fire! and flame!!" (words borrowed from Lucretius,) "Dread metaphors which open wounds" like issues! And Master G- recites what Doctor Busby sings!- (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. I allude not to our friend Landor's hero, the traitor Count Julian, but to Gibbon's hero, vulgarly yelept "The Apostate." Among the addresses sent in to the Drury Lane Committee, was one by Dr. Busby. entitled "A Monologue," of which the above is a parody.Afoure [Instead of the lines to Inez, which now stand in the First Canto of Childə Harold, Lord Byron had originally written the following:] 1. OH never talk again to me Of northern climes and British ladies; It has not been your lot to see, Like me, the lovely girl of Cadiz. Although her eye be not of blue, Nor fair her locks, like English lasses, How far its own expressive hue The languid azure eye surpasses! 2. Prometheus-like, from heaven she stole The fire, that through those silken lashes In darkest glances seems to roll, From eyes that cannot hide their flashes: And as along her bosom steal In lengthen'd flow her raven tresses, You'd swear each clustering lock could feel, And curl'd to give her neck caresses. 3. Our English maids are long to woo, For love ordain'd the Spanish maid is, The Spanish maid is no coquette, Nor joys to see a lover tremble, And if she love, or if she hate, Alike she knows not to dissemble Her heart can ne'er be bought or soldHowe'er it beats, it beats sincerely; And, though it will not bend to gold, "Twill love you long and love you dearly 5. The Spanish girl that meets your love Her passion in the hour of trial. She dares the deed and shares the danger; And should her lover press the plain, She hurls the spear, her love's avenger. 6. And when, beneath the evening star, Of Christian knight or Moorish hero, Beneath the twinkling rays of Hesper, Or join devotion's choral band, To chaunt the sweet and hallow'd vesper; 7. In each her charms the heart must move But none abroad, and few at home, FAREWELL TO MALTA. ADIEU, ye joys of La Valette! Adieu, ye mansions where-I've ventur'd! (How surely he who mounts you swears!). Adieu, ye merchants often failing! Adieu, thou mob forever railing! Adieu, ye packets-without letters! Adieu, ye fools-who ape your betters! Adieu, thou damned'st quarantine, That gave me fever, and the spleen! Adieu that stage which makes us yawn, Sirs, Of all that strut "en militaire!" Farewell to these, but not adieu, And fallen chiefs, and fleets no more, But she must be content to shine And now, O Malta! since thou'st got us, I'll not offend with words uncivil, Or take my physic while I'm able |