With such an aspect, by his colours blent,
When from his beauty-breathing pencil born,
(Except that thou hast nothing to repent)

The Magdalen of Guido saw the morn-
Such seem'st thou-but how much more excellent!
With nought Remorse can claim-nor Virtue

scorn.

December 17, 1813. (1)

SONNET, TO THE SAME.

THY cheek is pale with thought, but not from woe,
And yet, so lovely, that if Mirth could flush
Its rose of whiteness with the brightest blush,
My heart would wish away that ruder glow:
And dazzle not thy deep-blue eyes-but, oh!

While gazing on them sterner eyes will gush,
And into mine my mother's weakness rush,
Soft as the last drops round heaven's airy bow.
For, through thy long dark lashes low depending,
The soul of melancholy Gentleness
Gleams like a seraph from the sky descending,

Above all pain, yet pitying all distress:
At once such majesty with sweetness blending,
I worship more, but cannot love thee less.

December 17, 1813.

FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

"Tu mi chamas."

IN moments to delight devoted,

"My life!" with tenderest tone, you cry;
Dear words! on which my heart had doted,
If youth could neither fade nor die.
To death even hours like these must roll,
Ah! then repeat those accents never;
Or change "my life!" into "my soul!"
Which, like my love, exists for ever.
ANOTHER VERSION.

THE DEVIL'S DRIVE;

AN UNFINISHED RHAPSODY. (2)

"

And sausages made of a self-slain Jew-
And bethought himself what next to do.

"And," quoth he, "I'll take a drive.
I walk'd in the morning, I'll ride to-night;
In darkness my children take most delight,

And I'll see how my favourites thrive.

"And what shall I ride in ?" quoth Lucifer then-
"If I follow'd my taste, indeed,

I should mount in a waggon of wounded men,
And smile to see them bleed.

But first as he flew, I forgot to say,
That he hover'd a moment upon his way
To look upon Leipsic plain;

And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare
And so soft to his ear was the cry of despair,

That he perch'd on a mountain of slain;
And he gazed with delight from its growing height:
Nor often on earth had he seen such a sight,

Nor his work done half as well;

For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead,
That it blush'd like the waves of hell!
Then loudly, and wildly, and long laugh'd he:

You call me still your life.-Oh! change the word-"Methinks they have here little need of me!"

Life is as transient as the inconstant sigh: Say rather I'm your soul; more just that name, For, like the soul, my love can never die.

(1) "Redde some Italian, and wrote two sonnets. ( never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise-and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions." Diary, 1815.-E.

But these will be furnish'd again and again,
And at present my purpose is speed;
To see my manor as much as I may,
And watch that no souls shall be poach'd away.

"I have a state-coach at Carlton House,

A chariot in Seymour Place;

But they're lent to two friends, who make me
By driving my favourite pace:
[amends
And they handle their reins with such a grace,
I have something for both at the end of their race.
"So now for the earth, to take my chance!"
Then up to the earth sprung he

And making a jump from Moscow to France,
He stepp'd across the sea,
And rested his hoof on a turnpike road,
No very great way from a bishop's abode.

But the softest note that soothed his ear

Was the sound of a widow sighing;
And the sweetest sight was the icy tear,
Which horror froze in the blue eye clear

Of a maid by her lover lying-
As round her fell her long fair hair;
And she look'd to heaven with that frenzied air,
Which seem'd to ask if a God were there!
And, stretch'd by the wall of a ruin'd hut,

THE devil return'd to hell by two,

And he stay'd at home till five;

When he dined on some homicides done in ragout, With its hollow cheek, and eyes half shut,
And a rebel or so in an Irish stew,
A child of famine dying:

(2) I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhap sody, called The Devil's Drive,' the notion of which I took from Porson's Devil's Walk" B. Diary, 1813.-"This strange wild poem," says Moore, " is, for the most part, rather clumsily executed, wanting the point and condensation of those clever

And the carnage, begun when resistance is done, And the Devil was shock'd-and quoth he, “I
And the fall of the vainly flying!

But the Devil has reach'd our cliffs so white,
And what did he there, I pray?

If his eyes were good, he but saw by night
What we see every day:

But he made a tour, and kept a journal

Of all the wondrous sights nocturnal,

And he sold it in shares to the men of the Row,
Who bid pretty well-but they cheated him, though!
The Devil first saw, as he thought, the mail,
Its coachman and his coat;

So instead of a pistol he cock'd his tail,

And seized him by the throat:
"Aha!" quoth he, "what have we here?
'T is a new barouche, and an ancient peer!"
So he sat him on his box again,

And bade him have no fear,

But be true to his club, and stanch to his rein,
His brothel, and his beer;

Next to seeing a lord at the council-board,
I would rather see him here."

The devil gat next to Westminster,

And he turn'd to" the room" of the Commons;
But he heard, as he purposed to enter in there,
That" the Lords" had received a summons;

And he thought, as a "quondam aristocrat,"
He might peep at the peers, though to hear them
were flat;

And he walk'd up the house so like one of our own,
That they say that he stood pretty near the throne.
He saw the Lord Liverpool seemingly wise,

The Lord Westmoreland certainly silly,
And Johnny of Norfolk-a man of some size-
And Chatham, so like his friend Billy;
And he saw the tears in Lord Eldon's eyes,

Because the Catholics would not rise,

In spite of his prayers and his prophecies;
And he heard-which set Satan himself a staring-
Acertain Chief Justice say something like swearing.

verses of Mr. Coleridge, which Lord Byron, adopting a notion
long prevalent, has attributed to Professor Porson."-E.

(1) "I cannot conceive how the Vault has got about-but so
it is. It is too farouche; but, truth to say, my sallies are not
very playful." Lord B. to Mr. Moore.

(2) "To day I have boxed one hour-written an Ode to Na-
poleon Bonaparte--copied it-eaten six biscuits-drunk four
boules of soda water, and redde away the rest of my time."-
B. Diary, April 10.

(3)

Produce the urn that Hannibal contains,

And weigh the mighty dust which yet remains:
AND IS THIS ALL!'

must go,

For I find we have much better manners below;
If thus he harangues when he passes my border,
I shall hint to friend Moloch to call him to order."

(5) "I don't know-but I think 1, even 1 (an insect compared
with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part
of this man's. But, after all, a crown may not be worth dying
for. Yet, to outlive Lodi for this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Jolinson
I know not that this was ever done in the old world; at least, could rise from the dead! Expende-quot libras in duce summo
with regard to Hannibal: but, in the Statistical Account of invenies?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality;
Scotland, I find that Sir John Paterson had the curiosity to co- but I thought their living dust weighed more carats. Alas!
lect, and weigh, the ashes of a person, discovered a few years this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit
since in the parish of Eccles; which he was happily enabled to to stick in a glazier's pencil;-the pen of the historian won't

J.