The Works of Lord Byron Complete in One Volume

To infest the clime, whose skies and laws | And love much rather to be scourged than school'd?

are pure,

With thy foul legions. Spain wants no Ah! thine was not the temper or the taste For thrones-the table sees thee better placed:

manure;

Her soil is fertile, but she feeds no foe; *Her vultures, too, were gorged not long ago; And wouldst thou furnish them with fresher prey ?

Alas! thou wilt not conquer, but purvey.
I am Diogenes, though Russ and Hun
Stand between mine and many a myriad's
sun;

But were I not Diogenes, I'd wander
Rather a worm than such an Alexander!
Be slaves who will, the Cynic shall be free,
His tub hath tougher walls than Sinope:
Still will he hold his lanthorn up to scan
The face of monarchs for an "honest man."

And what doth Gaul, the all-prolific land Of ne plus ultra Ultras and their band Of mercenaries? and her noisy Chambers And Tribune, which each orator first clambers

Before he finds a voice, and, when 'tis found,

Hears "the lie" echo for his answer round? Our British Commons sometimes deign to

hear;

A mild Epicurean, form'd, at best,
To be a kind host and as good a guest,
To talk of letters, and to know by heart
One half the poet's, all the gourmand's art;
A scholar always, now and then a wit,
And gentle when digestion may permit-
But not to govern lands enslaved or free;
The gout was martyrdom enough for thee!

Shall noble Albion pass without a phrase From a bold Briton in her wonted praise? "Arts-arms-and George-and glory and the isles

And happy, Britain-wealth and freedom's smiles

White cliffs, that held invasion far aloof| Contented subjects, all alike tax-proofProud Wellington, with eagle-beak so curl'd, That nose, the hook where he suspends the world!

And Waterloo-and trade-and--(hush! not yet

A syllable of imposts or of debt)——
And ne'er (enough) lamented Castlereagh,
Whose pen-knife slit a goose-quill t'other
day-

storm--

A Gallic Senate hath more tongue than ear;
Even Constant, their sole master of debate,
Must fight next day, his speech to vindicate. | And pilots who have weather'd every
But this costs little to true Franks, who
had rather
Combat than listen, were it to their father.
What is the simple standing of a shot,
To listening long, and interrupting not?
Though this was not the method of old
Rome,

When Tully fulmined o'er each vocal dome, Demosthenes has sanction'd the transaction, In saying eloquence meant “Action, action!"

But where's the Monarch? hath he dined? or yet Groans beneath indigestion's heavy debt? Have revolutionary pâtés risen, And turn'd the royal entrails to a prison? Have discontented movements stirr'd the troops?

Or have no movements follow'd traiterous soups?

Have Carbonaro cooks not carbonadoed Each course enough? or doctors dire dissuaded

Repletion? Ah! in thy dejected looks
I read all--'s treason in her cooks!
Good classic- ! is it, canst thou say,
Desirable to be the "——————
--?"
Why wouldst thou leave calm—-
abode,
Apician table and Horatian ode,
To rule a people who will not be ruled,

's green

(But, no, not even for rhyme's sake, name reform)." These are the themes thus sung so oft before,

Methinks we need not sing them any more; Found in so many volumes far and near, There's no occasion you should find them here.

Yet something may remain perchance to chime With reason, and, what's stranger still, with rhyme;

Even this thy genius, Canning! may permit,
Who, bred a statesman. still was born a wit,
And never, even in that dull house, couldst
tame

To unleaven'd prose thine own poetic flame;
Our last, our best, our only orator,
Even I can praise thee -Tories do no more,
Nay, not so much;-they hate thee, man,
because

Nor royal stallion's feet extremely sure;
The unwieldy old White Horse is apt at last
To stumble,kick,and now and then stick fast
With his great self and rider in the mud;
But what of that? the animal shows blood.

Alas,the country! how shall tongue or pen
Bewail her now uncountry-gentlemen ?—
The last to bid the cry of warfare cease,
The first to make a malady of peace.
For what were all these country-patriots

born?

To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn.
But corn, like every mortal thing,must fall
Kings, conquerors, and markets most of all.
And must ye fall with every ear of grain?
Why would you trouble Bonaparte's reign?
He was your great Triptolemus! his vices
Destroy'd but realms, and still maintain'd
your prices;

He amplified, to every Lord's content,
The grand Agrarian Alchymy-high Rent.
Why did the tyrant stumble on the Tartars,
And lower wheat to such desponding
quarters?

Why did you chain him on you isle so lone?
The man was worth much more upon his
throne.

True, blood and treasure boundlessly were

spilt,

But what of that? the Gaul may bear the
guilt;

But bread was high, the farmer paid his way,
And acres told upon the appointed day.
But where is now the goodly audit-ale?
The purse-proud tenant never known to fail?
The farm which never yet was left on hand?
The marsh reclaim'd to most improving
land?

The impatient hope of the expiring lease?
The doubling rental? What an evil's peace!
In vain the prize excites the ploughman's

skill,

land)

The land self-interest groans from shore to shore,

They roar'd, they dined, they drank, they
swore they meant
To die for England-why then live? fu
Rent!

The peace has made one general malcontent
Of these high-market patriots; war wa
Rent!

Their love of country,millions all mis-spent
How reconcile?—by reconciling Rent.
And will they not repay the treasures lent!
No: down with every thing, and up with
Rent!

Their good, ill, health, wealth, joy, a
discontent,

Being, end, aim, religion- Rent, Rent, Reat!
Thou sold'st thy birth-right, Esau! for 1

Are idle; Israel says the bargain stands.
Such, landlords, was your appetite for war,
And, gorged with blood, you grumble at
a scar!

What, would they spread their earthquake
even o'er Cash?
And when land crumbles, bid firm paper
crash?

So rent may rise, bid bank and nation fall,
And found on 'Change a Fundling Hospital?
Lo, Mother Church, while all religion
writhes,

Like Niobe, weeps o'er her offspring, Tithes;
The Prelates go to—where the Saints have

gone,

In vain the Commons pass their patriot bill;
The landed interest—(you may understand | And proud pluralities subside to one;
The phrase much better leaving out the Church,state,and faction, wrestle in the dark,
Toss'd by the Deluge in their common ark.
Shorn of her Bishops, banks, and dividends,
Another Babel soars-but Britain ends.
And why?to pamper the self-seeking wants,
And prop the hill of these agrarian ants.
"Go to these ants, thou sluggard, and be
wise;"

For fear that plenty should attain the poor.
Up! up again! ye rents, exalt your notes,
Or else the Ministry will lose their votes,
And Patriotism, so delicately nice,
Her loaves will lower to the market-price;
For ah!"the loaves and fishes,” once so high,
Are gone their oven closed, their ocean dry;
And nought remains of all the millions spent,
Excepting to grow moderate and content.
They who are not so,had their turn and turn
About still flows from Fortune's equal urn;
Now let their virtue be its own reward,
And share the blessings which themselves
prepared.

See these inglorious Cincipnāti swarm,

Admire their patience through each sacrifice,
Till taught to feel the lesson of their pride,
The price of taxes and of homicide;
Admire their justice, which would fain deny
The debt of nations-pray, who made it
high?

Or turn to sail between those shifting

rocks, The new Symplegades—the crushing Stocks,

Where Midas might again his wish behold
In real paper or imagined gold.
That magic palace of Alcina shows
More wealth than Britain ever had to lose,
Were all her atoms of unleaven'd ore,
And all her pebbles from Pactolus' shore.
There Fortune plays, while Rumour holds
the stake,

And the world trembles to bid brokers break.
· How rich is Britain! not indeed in mines,
Or peace, or plenty, corn, or oil, or wines;
No land of Canaan, full of milk and honey,
Nor (save in paper shekels) ready money:
: But let us not to own the truth refuse,
Was ever Christian land so rich in Jews?
Those parted with their teeth to good King
John,

And now, ye kings! they kindly draw your own;

All states, all things, all sovereigns they controul,

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The averted eye of the reluctant Muse.
The imperial daughter, the imperial bride,
The imperial victim-sacrifice to pride;
The mother of the hero's hope, the boy,
The young Astyanax of modern Troy;
| The still pale shadow of the loftiest queen
That earth has yet to see, or e'er hath seen;
She flits amidst the phantoms of the hour,
The theme of pity, and the wreck of power.
Oh, cruel mockery! Could not Austria spare
A daughter? What did France's widow there?
Her fitter place was by St. Helen's wave-
Her only throne is in Napoleon's grave.
But, no,- she still must hold a petty reign,
Flank'd by her formidable Chamberlain ;
The martial Argus, whose not hundred eyes
Must watch her through these paltry pa-
geantries.

What though she share no more and shared
in vain

A sway surpassing that of Charlemagne, Which swept from Moscow to the Southern seas,

Yet still she rules the pastoral realm of cheese,

mourn

Who spit not "on their Jewish gaberdine,"
But honour them as portion of the show- Where Parma views the traveller resort
(Where now, oh, Pope! is thy forsaken toe? To note the trappings of her mimic court.
Could it not favour Judah with some kicks? | But she appears! Verona sees her shorn
Or has it ceased to "kick against the pricks?") Of all her beams-while nations gaze and
On Shylock's shore behold them stand
Ere yet her husband's ashes have had time
To chill in their inhospitable clime
(If e'er those awful ashes can grow cold-
But no,-their embers soon will burst the
mould);
She comes!-the Andromache (but not
Racine's,

afresh,

To cut from nations' hearts their "pound of flesh."

Strange sight this Congress! destined to
unite

All that's incongruous, all that's opposite.
I speak not of the Sovereigns-they're alike,
A common coin as ever mint could strike:
But those who sway the puppets, pull the
strings,

Nor Homer's); lo! on Pyrrhus' arm she leans!
Yes! the right arm, yet red from Waterloo,
Which cut her lord's half-shatter'd sceptre
through,

Is offer'd and accepted! Could a slave

Do more? or less?—and he in his new grave! To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman! Guildhall grows Gael, and echoes with Erse While all the Common-Council cry, “Claymore ! "

Her eye, her cheek, betray no inward strife,
And the Ex-Empress grows as Er a wife!
So much for human ties in royal breasts!
Why spare men's feelings, when their own
are jests?

But, tired of foreign follies, I turn home, And sketch the group-the picture's yet to

come.

roar,

To see proud Albyn's Tartans as a belt
Gird the gross sirloin of a City-Celt,
She burst into a laughter so extreme,
That I awoke - and lo! it was no dream!

Here, reader, will we pause:- if there's no harm in

My Muse 'gan weep, but,ere a tear was spilt, She caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt! While throng'd the Chiefs of every High-This first-you'll, have, perhaps, a second land clan "Carmen."

THE VISION OF JUDGMENT.

VISION OF

BY QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS.

SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION 80 ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR OF "WAT TYLER."

It almost quench'd his innate thirst of evil. | What nature made him at his birth, as bare (Here Satan's sole good work deserves in-As the mere million's base unmummied sertionclay"Tis, that he has both generals in reversion.) Yet all his spices but prolong decay.

He died!-his death made no great stir on earth;

His burial made some pomp; there was profusion

He's dead-and upper earth with him has done:

He's buried; save the undertaker's bill,
Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone
For him, unless he left a German will;
But where's the proctor who will ask his son?
In whom his qualities are reigning still,
Except that household virtue, most un-

common,

Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman.

“God save the king !" It is a large economy In God to save the like; but if he will Be saving, all the better; for not one am I Of those who think damnation better still: | I hardly know too if not quite alone am I In this small hope of bettering future ill By circumscribing, with some slight restriction,

The eternity of hell's hot jurisdiction.

I know this is unpopular; I know 'Tis blasphemous; I know one may be damn'd For hoping no one else may e'er be so; I know my catechism; I know we are cramm'd With the best doctrines till we quite o'erflow; I know that all save England's church have shamm'd,

And that the other twice two hundred churches

Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great dearth
Of aught but tears -save those shed by And synagogues have made a damn'd bad

collusion;

For these things may be bought at their true worth:

Of elegy there was the due infusion— Bought also; and the torches, cloaks, and banners,

Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners,

Form'd a sepulchral melo-drame. Of all The fools who flock'd to swell or see the show,

Who cared about the corpse? The funeral
Made the attraction, and the black the woe.
There throbb'd not there a thought which
pierced the pall;
And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,
It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.

So mix his body with the dust! It might
Return to what it must far sooner, were
The natural compound left alone to fight
Its way back into earth, and fire, and air;
But the unnatural balsams merely blight|

purchase.

God help us all! God help me, too! I am,
God knows, as helpless as the devil can wish,
And not a whit more difficult to damn
Than is to bring to land a late-hook'd fish,
Or to the butcher to purvey the lamb;
Not that I'm fit for such a noble dish
As one day will be that immortal fry
Of almost every body born to die.

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate,
And nodded o'er his keys; when lo! there

came

A wonderous noise he had not heard of late

A rushing sound of wind, and stream, and flame; In short, a roar of things extremely great, Which would have made aught save a saint exclaim;

But he, with first a start and then a wink, Said, “There's another star gone out, I think!"

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