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TO A VAIN LADY.

Ан, heedless girl! why thus disclose
What ne'er was meant for other ears?
Why thus destroy thine own repose
And dig the source of future tears?
Oh, thou wilt weep, imprudent maid,
While lurking envious foes will smile,
For all the follies thou hast said

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,
I pity, but I cannot love.

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?
Ah, surely affection ennobles the strain!

But how can my numbers in sympathy move
When I scarcely can hope to behold them again?
Can I sing of the deeds which my Fathers have done,
And raise my loud harp to the fame of my sires?
For glories like theirs, oh, how faint is my tone!
For Heroes' exploits how unequal my fires!
Untouch'd, then, my Lyre shall reply to the blast-
'Tis hush'd; and my feeble endeavours are o'er;
And those who have heard it will pardon the past,
When they know that its murmurs shall vibrate no

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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 look'd in your face, and I almost forgave you.
I vow'd I could ne'er for a Koment respect you,
Yet thought that a day's separation was long:
When we met, I determin'd again to suspect you-
Your smile soon convinced me suspicion was wrong

I swore, in a transport of young indignation,
With fervent contempt evermore to disdain you:
I saw you-my anger became admiration;
And now,
all my wish, all my hope 's to regain you.
With beauty like yours, oh, how vain the contention.
Thus lowly I sue for forgiveness before you;-
At once to conclude such a fruitless dissension,
Be false, my sweet Anne, when I cease to adore you
January 16, 1807.

TO THE SAME.

Он say not, sweet Anne, that the Fates have decrees
The heart which adores you should wish to dissever
Such Fates were to me most unkind ones indeed,-
To bear me from love and from beauty for ever.
Your frowns, lovely girl, are the Fates which alone
Could bid me from fond admiration refrain;
By these, every hope, every wish were o'erthrown,
Till smiles should restore me to rapture again.
As the ivy and oak, in the forest entwined,
The rage of the tempest united must weather,
My love and my life were by nature design'd
To flourish alike, or to perish together.
Then say not, sweet Anne, that the fates have as-
creed,

Your lover should bid you a lasting adieu,
Till Fate can ordain that his bosom shall bleed,
His soul, his existence, are centred in you.
180

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THY verse is "sad" enough, no doubt:

A devilish deal more sad than witty!
Why we should weep I can't find out,
Unless for thee we weep in pity.
Yet there is one I pity more;

And much, alas! I think he needs it:
For he, I'm sure, will suffer sore,

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.
But would you make our bosoms bleed,
And of no common pang complain-

If you would make us weep indeed,
Tell us, you'll read them o'er again.
March 8, 1807.

ON FINDING A FAN.

IN one who felt as once he felt,
This might, perhaps, have fann'd the flame;
But now his heart no more will melt,
Because that heart is not the same.
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 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,
It sheds (so wayward fates ordain)
Its former warmth around another.

1807.

TO AN OAK AT NEWSTEAD.*

I left thee, my Oak, and, since that fatal hour,
A stranger has dwelt in the hall of my sire;
Till manhood shall crown me, not mine is the powe
But his, whose neglect may have bade thee expint
Oh! hardy thou wert-even now little care
Might revive thy young head, and thy wounds gent.
heal:

But thou wert not fated affection to share

For who could suppose that a stranger would feel
Ah, droop not, my Oak! lift thy head for awhile;
Ere twice round yon Glory this planet shall run,
The hand of thy Master will teach thee to smile,
When Infancy's years of probation are done.
Oh, live then, my Oak! tow'r aloft from the weeds,
That clog thy young growth, and assist thy decay
For still in thy bosom are life's early seeds,

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,
On thy leaves yet the day-beam of ages may shine
Uninjured by time, or the rude winter's breath.
For centuries still may thy boughs lightly wave
O'er the corse of thy lord in thy canopy laid;
While the branches thus gratefully shelter his grave,
The chief who survives may recline in thy shade.
And as he, with his boys, shall revisit this spot,
He will tell them in whispers more softly to tread.
Oh! surely, by these I shall ne'er be forgot:

Remembrance still hallows the dust of the dead.
And here, will they say, when in life's glowing prime
Perhaps he has pour'd forth his young simple lay,
And here must he sleep, till the moments of time
Are lost in the hours of Eternity's day.

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"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,
I hoped that thy days would be longer thau mine;"A dainty dish to set before the King,"
That thy dark-waving branches would flourish around,
And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.
Such, sucn was my hope, when, in infancy's years,
On the land of my fathers I rear'd thee with pride:
1ney are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,-
Thy decay not the weeds that surround thee can hide.

Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;-
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,-

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-
I wish he would explain his explanation.

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You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,

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-
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.

V.

You-Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continued fusion
Of one another's minds, at last have grown

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,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
He did not lothe the Sire to laud the Son,
But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.

XI.

Think'st thou, could he-the blind Old Man-arise
Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,

Or be alive again--again all hoar

With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,
And heartless daughters-worn and pale-tan

poor;

Would he adore a sultan? he obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh ?

XII.

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,

Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for To lengthen fetters by another fix'd,

ocean.

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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
Ineffably-legitimately vile,

That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes-all nations-condescend to smile,-

Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

XIV.

A bungler even in its disgusting trade,

And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,

States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confined
Conspiracy or Congress to be made-

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,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,

I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy, and the skill you need;
And recollect a poet nothing loses

In giving to his brethren their full meed

Of merit, and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.

IX.

He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he

Being only injured by his own assertion;
And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,
The major part of such appellants go

To-God knows where-for no one else can know.

X.

If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
Milton appeal'd to the Avenger, Time,

If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word "Miltonic" mean "sublime,"

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,
Emasculated to the marrow It

Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many masters,-blind

To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,
Fearless-because no feeling dwells in ice
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.

XVI.

Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
For I will never feel them ;- Italy!

Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds

Beneath the lie this State-thing breathed o'er thee-
Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green wounds,
Have voices-tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves-allies-kings-armies still,
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.

"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,
In honest simple verse, this song to you,
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,

'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.
OF DON JUAN.

I WOULD to heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling-
Because at least the past were pass'd away-
And for the future-(but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly to-day,

So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
I say the future is a serious matter-
And so-for God's sake-hock and soda-water!

These, if we win the Graces, too, we gain
Disgraces, too! "inseparable train !"

"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.
"Tis ours to look on you-you hold the prize,"
'Tis twenty guineas, as they advertise!

"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 sleeping pangs awake-and-but away"
(Confound me if I know what next to say,)
"Lo Hope reviving re-expands her wings,"

And Master G- recites what Doctor Busby sings!-
If mighty things with small we may compare,"
(Translated from the grammar for the fair!)
Dramatic "spirit drives a conquering car,"
And burn'd poor Moscow like a tub of "tar."
This spirit Wellington has shown in Spain."
To furnish melodrames for Drury Lane.
"Another Marlborough points to Blenheim's story,"
And George and I will dramatize it for ye.
In arts and sciences our isle hath shown"

(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,
And frigid even in possession;
And if their charms be fair to view,
Their lips are slow at Love's confession
But born beneath a brighter sun,

For love ordain'd the Spanish maid is,
And who, when fondly, fairly won,-
Enchants you like the Girl of Cadiz?
4.

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
Ne'er taunts you with a mock denial,
For every thought is bent to prove

Her passion in the hour of trial.
When thronging foemen menace Spain,

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,
She mingles in the gay Bolero,
Or sings to her attuned guitar

Of Christian knight or Moorish hero,
Or counts her beads with fairy hand

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
Of all who venture to behold her;
Then let not maids less fair reprove
Because her bosom is not colder:
Through many a clime 't is mine to roam,
Where many a soft and melting maid is,

But none abroad, and few at home,
May match the dark-eyed Girl of Cadiz.

FAREWELL TO MALTA.

ADIEU, ye joys of La Valette!
Adieu, sirocco, sun, and sweat!
Adieu, the palace rarely entered!

Adieu, ye mansions where-I've ventur'd!
Adieu, ye cursed streets of stairs!

(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,
Adieu his Excellency's dancers!
Adieu to Peter-whom no fault 's in,
But could not teach a colonel waltzing:
Adieu, ye females fraught with graces!
Adieu red coats, and redder faces!
Adieu the supercilious air

Of all that strut "en militaire!"
I go-but God knows when, or why.
To smoky towns and cloudy sky,
To things (the honest truth to say)
As bad-but in a different way.-

Farewell to these, but not adieu,
Triumphant sons of truest blue!
While either Adriatic shore,

And fallen chiefs, and fleets no more,
And nightly smiles, and daily dinners,
Proclaim you war and women's winners.
Pardon my Muse, who apt to prate is,
And take my rhyme-because 't is " gratis."
And now I've got to Mrs. Fraser,
Perhaps you think I mean to praise her-
And were I vain enough to think
My praise was worth this drop of ink,
A line or two-were no hard matter,
As here, indeed, I need not flatter:

But she must be content to shine
In better praises than in mine,
With lively air, and onen heart,
And fashion's ease, without its art,
Her hours can gaily glide along,
Nor ask the aid of idle song.-

And now, O Malta! since thou'st got us,
Thou little military hothouse!

I'll not offend with words uncivil,
And wish thee rudely at the Devil,
But only stare from out my casement,
And ask, for what is such a place meant?
Then, in my solitary nook,
Return to scribbling, or a book,

Or take my physic while I'm able
(Two spoonfuls hourly by the label,)
Prefer my nightcap to my beaver,
And bless the gods-I've got a fever!
May 26, 1811.

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