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And since not even our Rogers' praise
To common sense his thoughts could raise-
Why would they let him print his lays?

To me, divine Apollo, grant-O!
Hermilda's first and second canto,
I'm fitting up a new portmanteau;
And thus to furnish decent lining,
My own and others' bays I'm twining-
So, gentle Thurlow, throw me thine in,

TO LORD THURLOW.

"I lay my branch of laurel down: Then thus to form Apollo's crown, Let every other bring his own."

Lord Thurlow's lines to Mr. Rogers.

"I lay my branch of laurel down." Thou "lay thy branch of laurel down!" Why, what thou 'st stole is not enow; And, were it lawfully thine own,

Does Rogers want it most, or thou? Keep to thyself thy wither'd bough,

Or send it back to Doctor Donne:Were justice done to both, I trow,

He'd have but little, and thou-none.

"Then thus to form Apollo's crown."
A crown! why, twist it how you will,
Thy chaplet must be foolscap still.
When next you visit Delphi's town,

Inquire amongst your fellow-lodgers,
They'll tell you Phoebus gave his crown,
Some years before your birth, to Rogers.

"Let every other bring his own." When coals to Newscatle are carried,

And owls sent to Athens, as wonders, From his spouse when the Regent's unmarried, Or Liverpool weeps o'er his blunders:1 When Tories and Whigs cease to quarrel, When Castlereagh's wife has an heir, Then Rogers shall ask us for laurel,

And thou shalt have plenty to spare.

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And Lord Byron undertook to read it aloud; but he found it impossible to get beyond the first two words. Our laughter had now increased to such a pitch that nothing could restrain it. Two or three times he began, but, no sooner had the words 'When Rogers' passed his lips, than our fit burst forth afreshtill even Mr. Rogers himself, with all his feeling of our injustice, found it impossible not to join us; and had the author himself been of the party, I question much whether he could have resisted the infection."-Moore

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But now to my letter-to yours 't is an answer-
To-morrow be with me, as soon as you can, sir,
All ready and dress'd for proceeding to spunge on
(According to compact) the wit in the dungeon-
Pray Phoebus at length our political malice
May not get us lodgings within the same palace!
I suppose that to-night you 're engaged with some
codgers,

And for Sotheby's Blues have deserted Sam Rogers;
And I, though with cold I have nearly my death got,
Must put on my breeches, and wait on the Heathcote,
But to-morrow, at four, we will both play the
Scurra,

And you'll be Catullus, the Regent Mamurra.(1)

IMPROMPTU, IN REPLY TO A FRIEND.
WHEN, from the heart where Sorrow sits,
Her dusky shadow mounts too high,
And o'er the changing aspect flits,

And clouds the brow, or fills the eye;
Heed not that gloom, which soon shall sink :
My thoughts their dungeon know too well;
Back to my breast the wanderers shrink,
And droop within their silent cell. (2)
September, 1815.

SONNET, TO GENEVRA. THINE eyes' blue tenderness, thy long fair hair, And the wan lustre of thy features-caught From contemplation-where serenely wrought, Seems Sorrow's softness charm'd from its despairHave thrown such speaking sadness in thine air,

That-but I know thy blessed bosom fraught With mines of unalloy'd and stainless thoughtI should I ave deem'd thee doom'd to earthly care.

(1). The reader who wishes to understand the full force of this scandalous insinuation, is referred to Muretus's notes on a celebrated poem of Catullus, entitled In Cæsarem; but consisting, in fact, of savagely scornful abuse of the favourite Mamurra:

Quis hoc potest videre? quis potest pati,
Nisi impudicus et vorax et helluo?
Mamurram habere quod comata Gallia

Habebat unctim, et ultima Britannia?" etc.-E.

(2) "These verses are said to have dropped from the poet's pen, to excuse a transient expression of melancholy which overclouded the general gaiety". Walter Scott.-E.

916

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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.

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You call me still your life.-Oh! change the word—
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.

THE DEVIL'S DRIVE;

AN UNFINISHED RHAPSODY. (2)

THE devil return'd to hell by two,

And he stay'd at home till five;

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 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 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:1
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:
"Methinks they have here little need of me!”

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,

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,

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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, 1815.-"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;

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."

WINDSOR POETICS. (1)

Lines composed on the occasion of His Royal Highness the Prince
Regent being seen standing between the coffins of Henry VIII.
and Charles I., in the royal vault at Windsor.

FAMED for contemptuous breach of sacred ties,
By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies;
Between them stands another sceptred thing-
It moves, it reigns- in all but name, a king:
Charles to his people, Henry to his wife,
In him the double tyrant starts to life:
Justice and death have mix'd their dust in vain,
Each royal vampire wakes to life again.
Ah, what can tombs avail!-since these disgorge
The blood and dust of both-to mould a George.

ODE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. (2)

"Expende Annibalem:-quot libras in duce summo
Lavenies?"
Juvenal, Sat. X. (3)
"The Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the Senate, by
the Italians, and by the Provincials of Gaul: his moral virtues,
and military talents, were loudly celebrated; and those who
derived any private benefit from his government announced in
prophetic strains the restoration of public felicity.

And he walk'd up the house so like one of our own, By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life a few years,
That they say that he stood pretty near the throne. | in a very ambiguous state, between an Emperor and an exile,

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
bottles 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!'

till--"

Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. vi. p. 220. (4)
"T IS done-but yesterday a king!
And arm'd with kings to strive-
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject-yet alive!

Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive? (5)

do with great facility, as the inside of the coffin was smooth,
and the whole body visible.' Wonderful to relate, he found the
whole did not exceed in weight one ounce and a half! AND IS THIS
ALL! Alas! the quot libras itself is a satirical exaggeration."
Gifford.-E.

(4 "I send you an additional molto from Gibbon, which you
will find singularly appropriate." Lord B. to Mr. M. April 12,
1814.-E.

(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

Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind
Who bow'd so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,

Thou taught'st the rest to see.
With might unquestion'd,-power to save,-
Thine only gift hath been the grave

To those that worshipp'd thee:
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition's less than littleness!

Thanks for that lesson-it will teach

To after-warriors more
Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach'd before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,

That led them to adore
Those pagod things of sabre-sway,
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.

The triumph, and the vanity,

The rapture of the strife (1)—
The earthquake voice of Victory,
To thee the breath of life;
The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seem'd made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife-

All quell'd!-Dark Spirit! what must be
The madness of thy memory!

The desolator desolate!

The victor overthrown!

The arbiter of others' fate

A suppliant for his own!

Is it some yet imperial hope

That with such change can calmly cope?
Or dread of death alone?

To die a prince-or live a slave-
Thy choice is most ignobly brave!

rate it worth a ducat. Psha! 'something too much of this. But
I won't give him up, even now; though all his admirers have,
like the Thanes, fallen from him." B. Diary, April 9.-E.
(1) Certaminis gaudia"-the expression of Attila in his ha-
rangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in
Cassiodorus.

(2) "Out of town six days. On my return, find my poor little pagod, Napoleon, pushed off his pedestal It is his own fault. Like Milo, he would rend the oak; but it closed again, wedged his hands, and now the beasts-lion, bear, down to the dirtiest jackall-may all tear him. That Muscovite winter wedged his arms;-ever since, he has fought with his feet and teeth. The last may still leave their marks: and I guess now' (as the Yankees say), that he will yet play them a pass." B. Diary, April 8.

(5) Sylla.-[We find the germ of this stanza in the diary of the evening before it was written :-"Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged, and resigned in the height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes-the finest instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did well too Amurath not amiss, had he become aught except a dervise

He who of old would rend the oak (2)
Dream'd not of the rebound!
Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke-
Alone-how look'd he round?
Thou, in the sternness of thy strength,
An equal deed hast done at length,

And darker fate hast found:
He fell, the forest prowlers' prey;
But thou must eat thy heart away!

The Roman, (3) when his burning heart
Was slaked with blood of Rome,
Threw down the dagger-dared depart,
In savage grandeur, home.
He dared depart, in utter scorn
Of men that such a yoke had borne,
Yet left him such a doom!

His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandon'd power.

The Spaniard, when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell,(4)
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;

A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well: (5)
Yet better had he neither known

A bigot's shrine nor despot's throne. (6)

But thou-from thy reluctant hand

The thunderbolt is wrung

Too late thou leav'st the high command To which thy weakness clung;

All evil spirit as thou art,

It is enough to grieve the heart

To see thine own unstrung;

To think that God's fair world hath been
The footstool of a thing so mean!
And Earth hath spilt her blood for him,
Who thus can hoard his own!

Charles the Fifth but so so; but Napoleon worst of all." B Diary, April, 9].

(4) "Alter potent spell' to 'quickening spell:' the first (as Polonius says) is a vile phrase,' and means nothing, besides being common-place and Kosa-Matildaish. After the resolu tion of not publishing, though our Ode is a thing of little length and less consequence, it will be better altogether that it is anonymous." Lord B. to Mr. M. April 11.-E.

(5) Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, and king of Spain, resigned, in 1555, his imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, and the kingdom of Spain to his son Philip, and retired to a monastery in Estremadura, where he conformed, in his manner of living, to all the rigour of monastic austerity. Not satisfied with this, he dressed himself in his shroud, was laid in his coffin with much solemnity, joined in the prayers which were offered up for the rest of his soul, and mingled his tears with those which his attendants shed, as if they had been celebrating a real funeral.-E.

(6) "I looked," says Boswell, "into Lord Kaimes's Sketches of the History of Man, and mentioned to Dr. Johnson bis censure of Charles the Fifth, for celebrating his funeral obsequies

And monarchs bow'd the trembling limb,
And thank'd him for a throne!
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
Oh! ne'er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind!
Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,

Nor written thus in vain-
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,

Or deepen every stain:

If thou hadst died as honour dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again-

But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night? (1)
Weigh'd in the balance, hero-dust
Is vile as vulgar clay;

Thy scales, Mortality! are just

To all that pass away:

But yet methought the living great
Some higher sparks should animate,

To dazzle and dismay:

Nor deem'd Contempt could thus make mirth
Of these, the conquerors of the earth.

And she, proud Austria's mournful flower,
Thy still imperial bride;

How bears her breast the torturing hour?
Still clings she to thy side?

Must she too bend, must she too share
Thy late repentance, long despair,

Thou throneless homicide?

If still she loves thee, hoard that gem,
'Tis worth thy vanish'd diadem! (2)
Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle,
And gaze upon the sea;
That element may meet thy smile-
It ne'er was ruled by thee!
Or trace with thine all-idle hand

in his life-time, which, I told him, I had been used to think a solemn and affecting act." JouNSON. "Why, sir, a man may dispose his mind to think so of that act of Charles; but it is so liable to ridicule, that if one man out of ten thousand laughs at it, he 'll make the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninetynine laugh too."-Croker's Boswell, vol. iv. p. 102.-E. (4) In the MS.

But who would rise in brightest day

To set without one parting ray?"-E.

(2) Count Neipperg, a gentleman in the suite of the Emperor of Austria, who was first presented to Maria Louisa within a few days after Napoleon's abdication, became, in the sequel, her Chamberlain, and then her husband. He is said to have been a man of remarkably plain appearance. The Count died in 1831.-E.

(3) Dionysius the Younger, esteemed a greater tyrant than his father, on being for the second time banished from Syracuse, retired to Corinth, where he was obliged to turn schoolmaster for a subsistence.-E.

(4) The cage of Bajazet, by order of Tamerlane.

In loitering mood upon the sand
That Earth is now as free!
That Corinth's pedagogue (3) hath now
Transferr'd his by-word to thy brow.

Thou, Timour! in his captive's cage (4)
What thoughts will there be thine,
While brooding in thy prison'd rage?
But one- The world was mine'"
Unless, like he of Babylon,

All sense is with thy sceptre gone,

Life will not long confine

That spirit, pour'd so widely forth-
So long obey'd-so little worth!

Or, like the thief of fire from heaven,(5)
Wilt thou withstand the shock?
And share with him, the unforgiven,
His vulture and his rock!

Foredoom'd by God-by man accurst,(6)
And that last act, though not thy worst,
The very fiend's arch mock; (7)
He in his fall preserved his pride,
And, if a mortal, had as proudly died!

There was a day-there was an hour, (8)
While earth was Gaul's-Gaul thine-
When that immeasurable power

Unsated to resign

Had been an act of purer fame
Than gathers round Marengo's name,
And gilded thy decline

Through the long twilight of all time,
Despite some passing clouds of crime.

But thou, forsooth! must be a king,
And don the purple vest,—
As if that foolish robe could wring
Remembrance from thy breast.
Where is that faded garment ? where
The gewgaws thou wert fond to wear,
The star-the string-the crest?

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To lip a wanton, and suppose her chaste."-Shakspeare. [We believe there is no doubt of the anecdote here alluded to -of Napoleon's having found leisure for an unworthy amour. the very evening of his arrival at Fontainebleau.-E.]

(8) The three last stanzas, which Lord Byron had been solicited by Mr. Murray to write, to avoid the stamp duty then imposed upon publications not exceeding a sheet, were not published with the rest of the poem. "I don't like them at all," says Lord Byron, and they had better be left out. The fact is,

6.

I can't do any thing I am asked to do, however gladly I would; and at the end of a week my interest in a composition goes off."-E.

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