TO A VAIN LADY.

Can they speak of the friends that I lived but to love

Ah, surely affection ennobles the strain!
An, heedless girl! why thus disclose

But how can my numbers in sympathy move
What ne'er was meant for other ears?

When I scarcely can hope to behold them again!
Why thus destroy thine own repose

Can I sing of the deeds which my Fathers have done, And dig the source of future tears ?

And raise my loud harp to the fame of my sires Oh, thou wilt weep, imprudent maid,

For glories like theirs, oh, how faint is my tone!
While lurking envious foes will smile,

For Heroes' exploits how unequal my fires!
For all the follies thou hast said
Of those who spoke but to beguile.

Untouch'd, then, my Lyre shall reply to the blast

'Tis hush'd; and my feeble endeavours are o'er; Vain girl! thy ling'ring woes are nigh,

And those who have heard it will pardon the past, If thou believ'st what striplings say:

When they know that its murmurs shall vibrate no Oh, from the deep temptation fly,

more.
Nor fall the specious spoiler's prey.

And soon shall its wild erring notes be forgot,
Dost thou tepeat, in childish boast,

Since early affection and love is o'ercast:
The words man utters to deceive?

Oh! blest had my fate been, and happy my lot,
Thy peace, thy hope, thy all is lost,

Had the first strain of love been the dearest, the last. If chou can'st venture to believe.

Farewell, my young Muse! since we now can ne'er While now amongst thy female peers

meet; Thou tell'st again the soothing tale,

If our songs have been languid, they surely are few: Canst thou not mark the rising sneers

Let us hope that the present at least will be sweetDuplicity in vain would veil ?

The present-which seals our eternal Adieu. These tales in secret silence hush,

1807.
Nor make thyself the public gaze:
What modest maid without a blush

TO ANNE
Recounts a flattering coxcomb's praise ?

On! Anne, your offences to me have been grievous; Will not the laughing boy despise

I thought from my wrath no atonement could save Her who relates each fond conceit

you; Who, thinking Heaven is in her eyes,

But woman is made to command and deceive usYet cannot see the slight deceit?

I look'd in your face, and I almost forgave you. For she who takes a soft delight

I vow'd I could ne'er for å koment respect you, These amorous nothings in revealing,

Yet thought that a day's separation was long : Must credit all we say or write,

When we met, I determind again to suspect youWhile vanity prevents concealing.

Your smile soon convinced me suspicion was wrong Cease, if you prize your beauty's reign!

I swore, in a transport of young indignation,
No jealousy bids me reprove:

With fervent contempt evermore to disdain you : One, who is thus from nature vain,

I saw you—my anger became admiration;
I pity, but I cannot love.

And now, all my wish, all my hope's to regain you.
January 15, 1807.

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,
FAREWELL TO THE MUSE.

Be false, my sweet Anne, when I cease to adore you Trou Power! who hast ruled me through infancy's

January 16, 1807. days, Young offspring of Fancy, 't is time we should part ; Then rise on the gale this the last of my lays,

TO THE SAME. The coldest effusion which springs from my heart.

Ou say not, sweet Anne, that the Fates have decreea This bosom, responsive to rapture no more,

The heart which adores you should wish to dissever Shall hush thy wild notes, nor implore thee to sing ; Such Fates were to me most unkind ones indeed, The feelings of childhood, which taught thee to soar, To bear me from love and from beauty for ever. Are wafted far distant on Apathy's wing.

Your frowns, lovely girl, are the Fates which alone Though simple the themes of my rude flowing Lyre, Could bid me from fond admiration refrain;

Yet even these themes are departed for ever; By these, every hope, every wish were o'erthrown, No more beams the eyes which my dream could in. Till smiles should restore me to rapture again. spire,

As the ivy and oak, in the forest entwined, My visions are flown, to return,-alas, never!

The rage of the tempest united must weather, When drain'd is the nectar which gladdens the bowl, My love and my life were by nature design'd How vain is the effort delight to prolong!

To flourish alike, or to perish together.
When cold is the beauty which dwelt in my soul,
What magic of Fancy can lengthen my song?

Then say not, sweet Anne, that the fates have ae

creed, Can the lips sing of Love in the desert alone,

Your lover should bid you a lasting adieu ; or kisses and smiles which they now must resign? Till Fate can ordain that his bosom shall bleed, Or dwell with delight on the hours that are flown ? His soul, his existence, are centred in you. Ah, no! for those hours can no longer be mine.

180

TO THE AUTHOR OF A SONNET BEGINNING, I left thee, my Oak, and, since that fatal hour,

A stranger has dwelt in the hall of my sire; "'BAD IS MY VERSE,' YOU SAY, 'AND YET NO TEAR.""

Till manhood shall crown me, not mine is the powe THy verse is "sad" enough, no doubt:

But his, whose neglect may have bade thee espin A devilish deal more sad than witty!

Oh! hardy thou wert-even now little care Why we should weep I can't find out,

Might revive thy young head, and thy wounds gent. Unless for thee we weep in pity.

heal: Yet there is one I pity more ;

But thou wert not fated affection to share
And much, alaa! I think he needs it:

For who could suppose that a stranger would feel For he, I'm sure, will suffer sore,

Ah, droop not, my Oak! lift thy head for awhile; Who, to his own misfortune, reads it.

Ere twice round yon Glory this planet shall run, Thy rhymes, without the aid of magic,

The hand of thy Master will teach thee to smile, May once be read-but never after:

When Infancy's years of probation are done. Yet their effect's by no means tragic,

Oh, live then, my Oak! tow'r aloft from the weeds, Although by far too dull for laughter.

That clog thy young growth, and assist thy decay But would you make our bosoms bleed,

For still in thy bosom are life's early seeds,
And of no common pang complain-

And still may thy branches their beauty display If you would make us weep indeed,

Oh! yet, if maturity's years may be thine,
Tell us, you'll read them o'er again.

Though I shall lie low in the cavern of death,
March 8, 1807. 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 ON FINDING A FAN.

O'er the corse of thy lord in thy canopy laid; In one who felt as once he felt,

While the branches thus gratefully shelter his grave,

The chief who survives may recline in thy shade. This might, perhaps, have fann'd the flame; But now his heart no more will melt,

And as he, with his boys, shall revisit this spot, Because that heart is not the same.

He will tell them in whispers more softly to tread.

Oh! surely, by these I shall ne'er be forgot :
As when the ebbing flaines are low,
The aid which once improved their light,

Remembrance still hallows the dust of the dead. And bade them burn with fiercer glow,

And here, will they say, when in life's glowing prime Now quenches all their blaze in night.

Perhaps he has pourd forth his young simple lay,

And here must he sleep, till the moments of time Thus has it been with passion's fires

Are lost in the hours of Eternity's day.
As many a boy and girl remembers-

1807. While 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;

DEDICATION TO DON JUAN.
The last, alas! can ne'er survive;
No touch can bid its warmth return.

Bob Southey! you 're a poet-Poet-laureate, nr, if it chance to wake again,

And representative of all the race, Not always doom'd its heat to smother, Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at It sheds (so wayward fates ordain)

Last,--yours has lately been a common case, Its former warmth around another.

And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at? 1807. With all the Lakers, in and out of place?

A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye

Like “ four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;
TO AN OAK AT NEWSTEAD.*

II.

" Which pye being open'd, they began to sing." Young Oak! when I planted thee deep in the ground, (This old song and new simile holds good,)

I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine; " A dainty dish to set before the King," That thy dark.waving branches would flourish around,

Or Regent, who admires such kind of food ;And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine. And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, Such, sucn was my hope, when, in infancy's years,

But like a bawk encumber'd with his hood, On the land of my fathers I reard thee with pride: Explaining metaphysics to the nation'? ney are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,

I wish he would explain his explanation. Thy decay not the weeds that surround thee can hide.

And then you overstrain yourself, or so,

He deign'd not to belie his soul in songs,
And tumble downward like the flying fish

Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, He did not lothe the Sire to laud the Son,
And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob! But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.
IV.

XI.
And Wordsworth, in a rather long “Excursion," Think'st thou, could he-the blind Old Man-arise

(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages,) Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more Has given a sample from the vasty version

The blood of monarchs with his prophecies, Of his new system to perplex the sages;

Or be alive again--again all hoar 'Tis poetry-at least by his assertion,

With time and trials, and those helpless eyes, And may appear so when the dog-star rages- And heartless daughters — worn - and pale - tan And he who understands it would be able

poor; To add a story to the Tower of Babel.

Would he adore a sultan ? he obey

The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh ?1
V.
You-Gentlemen! by dint of long scclusion

XII.
From better company, have kept your own

Cold blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant! At Keswick, and, through still continued fusion Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore, or one another's minds, at last have grown

And thus for wider carnage taught to pant, To deem as a most logical conclusion,

Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore, That Poesy has wreaths for you alone:

The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want, There is a narrowness in such a notion,

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.

And offer poison long already mix'd.

XIII.
VI.
I would not imitate the petty thought,

An orator of such set trash of phrase
Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,

Ineffably-legitimately vile, For all the glory your conversion brought,

That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Since gold alone should not have been its price.

Nor foes-all nations--condescend to smile,You have your salary; was’t for that you wrought? Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.*

From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, You 're shabby fellows-true-but poets still,

That turns and turns to give the world a notion And duly seated on the immortal hill.

Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

XIV.
VII.

A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
Your bays may hide the boldness of your brows-

And botching, patching, leaving still behind Perhaps some virtuous blushes;-let them go

Something of which its masters are afraid, To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs

States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confined And for the fame you would engross below,

Conspiracy or Congress to be made-
The field is universal, and allows

Cobbling at manacles for all mankind
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow:
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try With God and man's abhorrence for its gains,

A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains, 'Gainst you the question with posterity.

XV.
VIII.

If we may judge of matter by the mind,
For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses, Emasculated to the marrow It

Contend not with you on the winged steed, Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind, I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses, Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,

The same you envy, and the skill you need; Eutropius of its many masters,-blind And recollect a poet nothing loses

To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit, In giving to his brethren their full meed

Fearless-because no fecling dwells in ice of merit, and complaint of present days

Its very courage stagnates to a vice.
Is not the certain path to future praise.

XVI.
IX.

Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
He that reserves his laurels for posterity

For I will never feel them ;-Italy! (Who does not often claim the bright reversion)

Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds Has generally no great crop to spare it, he

Beneath the lie this State-thing breathed o'er thee Being only injured by his own assertion;

Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green wounds, And although here and there some glorious rarity

Have voices-tongues to cry aloud for me. Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,

Europe has slaves-allies--kings-armies still, The major part of such appellants go

And Southey lives to sing them very ill. To-God knows where-for no one else can know.

+ " Pale, but not cadaverous ;"- Milton two elder daughters are saja to X.

have robbed him of his books, besides cheating and plaguing him in tbe

economy of his house, &c. &c. His feelings on such an outrage, both as a If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,

parent and a scholar, must have been singularly painful. Hayley compares

him tu Lear. See part third, Life of Milton, by W. Hayley (or Hailey as Milton appeal'd to the Avenger, Time,

spelt in the edition before me.) If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,

1 0,

“Would he subside into a hackney LaureatoAnd makes the word “Miltonic" mean “sublime,"

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,

'T is 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 I.

OP DON JUAN.

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.
"'T is 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

I WOULD to heaven that I were so much clay,

As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feelingBecause 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!

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 mark. (Instead of the lines to Inez, which now stand in the First Canto de Chile ed with the inverted commas of quotation--thus "-".

Harold, Lord Byron bad originally written the following :) " When energising objects men pursue,"

1. Then Lord knows what is writ by Lord knows who.

Ou never talk again to me * A modest monologue you here survey,"

Of northern climes and British ladies; Hiss'd from the theatre the "other day,"

It has not been your lot to see, As if Sir Fretful wrote “the slumberous" verse,

Like me, the lovely girl of Cadiz. And gave his son “ the rubbish" 10 rehearse.

Although her eye be not of blue, * Yet at the thing you'd never be amazed,"

Nor fair her locks, like English lasses, Knew you the rumpus which the author raised;

How far its own expressive hue * Nor even here your smiles would be represt,"

The languid azure eye surpasses ! Knew you these lines-the badness of the best.

2. " Flame! fire! and flame!!” (words borrowed from

Prometheus-like, from heaven she stole
Lucretius,)

The fire, that through those silken lashes “Dread metaphors which open wounds” like issues !

In darkest glances seems to roll, • And sleeping pangs awake-and-bul away"

From eyes that cannot bide their flashes: (Confound me if I know what next to say,)

And as along her bosom steal * Lo Hope reviving re-expands her wings,"

In lengthen'd flow ber raven tresses, And Master - recites what Doctor Busby sings !

You'd swear each clustering lock could feel, * If mighty things with small we may compare,”

And curl'd to give her neck caresses. (Translated from the grammar for the fair!) Dramatic "spirit drives a conquering car,"

3. And burn'd poor Moscow like a tub of “tar.”

Our English maids are long to woo, This spirit Wellington has shown in Spain."

And frigid even in possession ; To furnish melodrames for Drury Lane

And if their charms be fair to view, “ Another Marlborough points to Blenheim's story,"

Their lips are slow at Love's monforios And George and I will dramatize it for ye.

But born beneath a brighter sun,

For love ordaind the Spanish maid 18, In arts and sciences our isle hath shown"

And who,-when fondly, fairly won,(This deep discovery is mine alone.)

Enchants you like the Girl of Cadiz ? * Oh British poesy, whose powers inspire"

4. My verse-or I'in a fool-and Fame's a liar, • Thee we invoke, your sister arts implore"

The Spanish maid is no coquette, With "smiles," and "lyres," and "pencils," and much

Nor joys to see a lover tremble,

And if she love, or if she bate, more.

Alike she knows not to dissemble I allude not to our friend Landor's hero, the traitor Count Julian, but to

Her heart can ne'er be bought or soldGibbon's hero, vulgarly yelept " The Apostate."

Howe'er it beats, it beats sincerely; . Among the addresses rent in to the Drury Lane Committee, was one by Dr. Brusby. entitled “A Mouologue," of which the above is a parody.

And, though it will not bend to gold, Nars

'T will love you long and love you dearly

3