ANSWER. Why, how now, Parson Bowles? Sure the priest is maudlin! (To the public) How can you, d-n your Listen to his twaddling? [souls! ODE ON VENICE. (1) OH Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls A loud lament along the sweeping sea! streets. Oh! agony-that centuries should reap No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, And freedom the mere numbness of his chain ;— (1) Transmitted from Venice, along with Mazeppa.-E. He feels his spirits soaring-albeit weak, At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam, There is no hope for nations!—Search the page The everlasting to be which hath been, Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water, A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud, And their dead palates chew'd the cud of pain :- Cities and generations-fair, when freeFor, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee! Glory and Empire! once upon these towers thank The city it has clothed in chains, which clank The name of Commonwealth is past and gone O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe; Venice is crush'd, and Holland deigns to own A sceptre, and endures the purple robe; If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone His chainless mountains, 't is but for a time: For Tyranny of late is cunning grown, And in its own good season tramples down The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime, Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and Bequeath'd-a heritage of heart and hand, And proud distinction from each other land, Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion, As if his senseless sceptre were a wand Full of the magic of exploded scienceStill one great clime, in full and free defiance, Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime, Above the far Atlantic!-She has taught Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag, The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag, [bought May strike to those whose red right hands have (1) About the middle of April, 1819, Lord Byron travelled from Venice to Ravenna, at which last city he expected to find the Countess Guiccioli. These stanzas, which have been as much admired as any of the kind he ever wrote, were composed, according to Madame Guiccioli's statement, during this journey, and while Lord Byron was actually sailing on the Po. In trans Rights cheaply earn'd with blood.-Still, still, for ever Better, though each man's life-blood were a river, STANZAS TO THE PO.(1) RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls,(2) What if thy deep and ample stream should be Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; And such as thou art were my passions long. Time may have somewhat tamed them,-not for ever; Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye Thy bosom overboils, congenial river! Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away— But left long wrecks behind: and now again, Borne in our old unchanged career, we move; Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main, And I-to loving one I should not love. The current I behold will sweep beneath Her native walls and murmur at her feet; Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,— mitting them to England, in May, 1820, he says, "They must not be published: pray recollect this, as they are mere verses of society, and written upon private feelings and passions." They were first printed in 1824.-E. (2) He resided in the city of Ravenna rather more than two years, "and quitted it," says Madame Guiccioli," with the deep 1 Mine cannot witness, even in a dream, That happy wave repass me in its flow! The wave that bears my tears returns no more; Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep?Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore, I by thy source, she by the dark-blue deep. But that which keepeth us apart is not Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, But the distraction of a various lot, As various as the climates of our birth. A stranger loves the lady of the land, Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fann'd By the black wind that chills the polar flood. My blood is all meridian; were it not, I had not left my clime, nor should I be, A slave again of love,—at least of thee. And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved. EPIGRAM, FROM THE FRENCH OF Rulhières. IF, for silver or for gold, You could melt ten thousand pimples Looking, doubtless, much more snugly; SONNET TO GEORGE THE FOURTH, (1) ON THE REPEAL OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD'S FORFEITURE. To be the father of the fatherless, To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and His offspring, who expired in other days [raise To make thy sire's sway by a kingdom less,— This is to be a monarch, and repress Envy into unutterable praise. Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits, For who would lift a hand, except to bless ? STANZAS. (2) COULD Love for ever We'd hug the chain. Love plumes his wing; Let's love a season; But let that season be only Spring. When lovers parted A few years older, But sadly shiver Without his plumage, when past the spring.(3) Like chiefs of faction, That curbs his reign, Obscures his glory; Despot no more, he est regret, and with a presentiment that his departure would be (2) A friend of Lord Byron's, who was with him a: Ravenna the forerunner of a thousand evils: he was continually perform- when he wrote these Stanzas, says,-"They were composed, ing generous actions: many families owed to him the few pros-like many others, with no view of publication, but merely to perous days they ever enjoyed; his arrival was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity."-E. (1) So the prince has been repealing Lord Fitzgerald's forfeiture? Ecco un' sonetto? There, you dogs! there's a sonnet for you: you won't have such as that in a hurry from Fitzgerald. You may publish it with my name, an ye wool. He deserves all praise, bad and good: it was a very noble piece of principality." Lord B. to Mr. Murray.-E. relieve himself in a moment of suffering. He had been painfully excited by some circumstances which appeared to make it necessary that he should immediately quit Italy; and in the day and the hour that he wrote the song, was labouring under an access of fever."-E. (3) "That sped his spring."-E Such territory He must move on- Love brooks not a degraded throne. Wait not, fond lover! As from a dream. All hideous seem- All passion blight: If once diminish'd Love's reign is finish'd Then part in friendship,-and bid good-night.(1) So shall affection To recollection The dear connection Bring back with joy: The same fond faces As through the past; Reflect but rapture-not least though last. True, separations Ask more than patience; What desperations From such have risen! But yet remaining, Hearts which, once waning, Beat 'gainst their prison? Time can but cloy love, (1) V. L.-"One last embrace, then, and bid good-night."-E. (2) These lines are extracted from a letter of Byron to Moore, bearing the above date, and preceded by the following from Cowper's John Gilpin: "To-day it is my wedding day, And all the folks would stare, If wife should dine at Edmonton, And I should dine at Ware."-E. True, the chains of the Catholic clank o'er his rags; The Castle still stands, and the senate's no more, And the famine which dwelt on her freedomless crags Is extending its steps to her desolate shore. To her desolate shore-where the emigrant stands For a moment to gaze ere he flies from his hearth; Tears fall on his chain, though it drops from his hands, For the dungeon he quits is the place of his birth. But he comes! the Messiah of royalty comes! Like a goodly Leviathan roll'd from the waves! Then receive him as best such an advent becomes, With a legion of cooks, and an army of slaves! He comes, in the promise and bloom of threescore, To perform in the pageant the sovereign's partBut long live the shamrock which shadows him o'er; Could that long-wither'd spot but be verdant again, And a new spring of noble affections ariseThen might freedom forgive thee this dance in thy chain, [skies. And this shout of thy slavery which saddens the Is it madness or meanness which clings to thee now! Were he God-as he is but the commonest clay, With scarce fewer wrinkles than sins on his browSuch servile devotion might shame him away. Ay, roar in his train! let thine orators lash Ere Tully arose in the zenith of Rome, [begun- With the fire of Prometheus to kindle mankind; Even Tyranny listening sate melted or mute, And Corruption shrunk scorch'd from the glance of his mind. But back to our theme! Back to despots and slaves! Feasts furnish'd by Famine! rejoicings by Pain! True freedom but welcomes, while slavery still raves, When a week's saturnalia hath loosen'd her chain. Let the poor squalid splendour thy wreck can afford (As the bankrupt's profusion his ruin would hide) Gild over the palace, Lo! Erin, thy lord! Kiss his foot with thy blessing, his blessings denied! Or if freedom past hope be extorted at last, If the idol of brass find his feet are of clay, Could the green in his hat be transferr'd to his Each brute hath its nature, a king's is to reign! — heart! The jest which it contains had been applied by the Genoese wits to himself. Taking it into their heads that this villa (which was also, I believe, a casa saluzzo), had been the one fixed on for his own residence, they said, 'Il Diavolo é ancora entrato in Para diso."" Moore. (1) "In one copy, the following sentence (taken from a letter of Curran, in the able life of that true Irishman, written by his son) is prefixed as a motto to the poem:- And Ireland like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider,'-At the end of the verses are these words;-(Signed) W. L. B To reign! in that word see, ye ages, comprised M. A., and written with a view to a bishoprick.'" Moore. "I will show you my Irish Avatara. Moore tells me that it has saved him from writing on the same subject: he would have done it much better." Medwin, (2) "After the stanza on Grattan, concluding with 'His soul o'er the freedom implored and denied,' will it please you to cause insert the following addenda,' which I dreamed of during to-day's siesta Ever glorious Grattan,' etc. etc. etc."— Letter from Byron to Moore. |