The wholly false the heart despises, Whose love is as sincere as sweet, As if a dream alone had charm'd? Ah! sure such grief is fancy's scheming, And all thy change can be but dreaming! ON BEING ASKED WHAT WAS THE "ORIGIN OF LOVE." THE "Origin of Love!"-Ah, why And shouldst thou seek his end to know: But live-until I cease to be. STANZAS. REMEMBER him, whom passion's power When neither fell, though both were loved. That yielding breast, that melting eye, Oh! let me feel that all I lost But saved thee all that conscience fears; And blush for every pang it cost To spare the vain remorse of years. Yet think of this when many a tongue, Whose busy accents whisper blame, Would do the heart that loved thee wrong, And brand a nearly blighted name. Think that, whate'er to others, thou Hast seen each selfish thought subdued: I bless thy purer soul even now, Even now, in midnight solitude. (1) The poems in question, as Moore states, "were written professedly in imitation of the old English writers, and contained, like many of these models, a good deal that was striking and beautiful, mixed up with much that was trifling, fantastic, and absurd. In vain did Mr. Rogers (to whom a copy of the work had been presented), in justice to the author, endeavour to direct our attention to some of the beauties of the work. One of the poems was a warm and, I need not add, well-deserved panegyric on himself. opening line of the poem was, as well as I can recollect, The Oh, God! that we had met in time, Far may thy days, as heretofore, Itself destroy'd might there destroy; Like mine, is wild and worthless all, Since not by Virtue shed in vain, My frenzy drew from eyes so dear; For me they shall not weep again. Though long and mournful must it be, The thought that we no more may meet; Yet I deserve the stern decree, And almost deem the sentence sweet. Still, had I loved thee less, my heart It felt not half so much to part, ON LORD THURLOW'S POEMS.(1) WHEN Thurlow this damn'd nonsense sent (I hope I am not violent), Nor men nor gods knew what he meant. And since not even our Rogers' praise 1813. To common sense his thoughts could raiseWhy would they let him print his lays? To me, divine Apollo, grant-0! When Rogers o'er this labour bent.' 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 afresh-till 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."-P. E. 109 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." Inquire amongst your fellow-lodgers, "Let every other bring his own." When coals to Newcastle are carried, And owls sent to Athens, as wonders, From his spouse when the Regent's unmarried, Or Liverpool weeps o'er his blunders; 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. (1) It was in Horsemonger-lane prison, and not in Cold Bath Fields.-P. E. (2) 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, Mamurram habere quod comata Gallia Habebat unctum, et ultima Britannia?" etc.-L. E. (3) "These verses are said to have dropped from the poet's pen, to excuse a transient expression of melancholy which overclouded the general gaiety. It was impossible to observe his interesting countenance, expressive of a dejection belonging neither to his rank, his age, nor his success, without feeling an indefinable curiosity to ascertain whether And I, though with cold I have nearly my death, Must put on my breeches, and wait on the Heathose, But to-morrow, at four, we will both play the Scars, And you'll be Catullus, the Regent Mamurra.(2) IMPROMPTU, IN REPLY TO A FRIEND. 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. (3) September, 1813. SONNET, TO GENEVRA. THINK 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 have deem'd thee doom'd to earthly care. 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 mornSuch seem'st thou-but how much more excellent! With nought Remorse can claim-nor Virtue scorn. December 17, 1813.(4) SONNET, TO THE SAME. THY cheek is pale with thought, but not from wee, 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, 1812. it had a deeper cause than habit or constitutional tempers ment. It was obviously of a degree incalculably more serous than that alluded to by Prince Arthur I remember, when I was in France, But, howsoever derived, this, joined to Lord Byron's air of mingling in amusements and sports as if he contemned them, and felt that his sphere was far above the frivoles crowd which surrounded him, gave a strong effect of co louring to a character whose tints were otherwise romanti Walter Scott.-L. E. (4) "Redde some Italian, and wrote two sonnets never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not i earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise-and never write another. They are the most puling, petrify stupidly platonic compositions." Diary, 1813.-L.B. 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. You call me still your life.-Oh! change the word- THE DEVIL'S DRIVE; an unfinished RHAPSODY. (1) Tax Devil return'd to hell by two, And he stay'd at home till five; When he dined on some homicides done in ragoút, "And," quoth he, "I'll take a drive. I walk'd in the morning, I'll ride to-night; 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, But these will be furnish'd again and again, 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 amends And they handle their reins with such a grace, "So now for the earth, to take my chance!" But first as he flew, I forgot to say, And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare, That he perch'd on a mountain of slain; For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead, That it blush'd like the waves of hell! (I) "I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called 'The Devil's Drive,' the notion of which I took from Porson's Devil's Walk." B. Diary, 1813.—“ Of this strange wild poem," says Moore, "the only copy that Lord Byron, I believe, ever wrote, he presented to Lord Hol1 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 As round her fell her long fair hair; And the carnage, begun when resistance is done, 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, The Devil first saw, as he thought, the mail, So instead of a pistol he cock'd his tail, 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, "Next to seeing a lord at the council-board, 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, He saw the Lord Liverpool seemingly wise, In spite of his prayers and his prophecies; land. Though with a good deal of vigour and imagination, it is, for the most part, rather clumsily executed, wanting the point and condensation of those clever verses of Mr. Coleridge, which Lord Byron, adopting a notion long prevalent, has attributed to Professor Porson."-L. E. WINDSOR POETICS. (1) Lines composed on the occasion of His Royal Highness the FAMED for contemptuous breach of sacred ties, Ah, what can tombs avail!-since these disgorge ODE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. (2) "Expende Annibalem :-quot libras in duce summo Invenies ?" 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. By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life a few years, in a very ambiguous state, between an Emperor and an exile, till—” Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. vi. p. 220. (4) "T is done--but yesterday a king! Is this the man of thousand thrones, Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones, (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. It "I am accused of ingratitude to a certain personage. is pretended that, after his civilities, I should not have spoken of him disrespectfully. Those epigrams were written long before my introduction to him; which was, after all, entirely accidental, and unsought for on my part. I met him one evening at Colonel J-'s. As the party was a small one, he could not help observing me; and as I made a considerable noise at that time, and was one of the lions of the day, he sent General -- to desire I would be presented to him. I would willingly have declined the honour, but could not with decency. His request was in the nature of a command. He was very polite, for he is the politest man in Europe, and paid me some compliments, that meant nothing. This was all the civility he ever showed me, and it does not burthen my conscience much." Medwin.-P. E. (2) The reader has seen that Lord Byron, when publishing The Corsair, in January, 1814, announced an apparently quite serious resolution to withdraw, for some years at least, from poetry. His letters, of the February and March following, abound in repetitions of the same determination. On the morning of the ninth of April, he writes-"No more rhyme for or rather from-me. I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer." In the evening, a Gazette Extraordinary announced the abdication of Fontainebleau, and the poet violated his vows next morning, by composing this Ode, which he immediately published, though without his name. His diary says:— "April 10. To-day I have boxed one hour-written an Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte-copied it-eaten six biscuits-drunk four bottles of soda water, and redde away the rest of my time."-L. E. (3) Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, To those that worshipp'd thee: Thanks for that lesson-it will teach That led them to adore The triumph, and the vanity, The rapture of the strife (6)— 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? I know not that this was ever done in the old world; at least, with regard to Hannibal: but, in the Statistical Ac count of Scotland, I find that Sir John Paterson bad the curiosity to collect, and weigh, the ashes of a person, s covered a few years since in the parish of Eccles; which be was happily enabled to do with great facility, as the side of the coffin was smooth, and the whole body visibi Wonderful to relate, he found the whole did not exceed in weight one ounce and a half! AND IS THIS ALL! Alas! quot libras itself is a satirical exaggeration." Gifford -LE' (4) "I send you an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find singularly appropriate." Lord B. to Mr. M. April 12. 1814.-L. E. (5) "I don't know-but I think I, even I (an insect com pared with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's. But, after all, a crown may i not be worth dying for. Yet, to outlive Lodi for this Ob that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! Er pende-quot libras in duce summo invenies?' I knew they! were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought the living dust weighed more carats. Alas! this imperial da mond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in glazier's pencil;-the pen of the historian won't rate worth a ducat. Psha! something too much of this I won't give him up, even now; though all his admin have, like the Thanes, fallen from him." B. Diary, Apri -L. E. (6) "Certaminis gaudia”—the expression of Attila his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chal given in Cassiodorus. To die a prince-or live a slave- He who of old would rend the oak (1) Alone-how look'd he round? The Roman, (2) when his burning heart His only glory was that hour The Spaniard, when the lust of sway A bigot's shrine nor despot's throne. (5) But thou-from thy reluctant hand The thunderbolt is wrung Too late thou leav'st the high command 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 And Earth hath spilt her blood for him, (I) "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.-L. E. (2) 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-Charles the Fifth but so so; but Napoleon worst of all." B. Diary, April 9.]—L. E. After (3) "Alter potent spell' to 'quickening spell:' the first (as Polonias says) is a vile phrase,' and means nothing, besides being common-place and Rosa Matildaish. the resolution 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 II. -L. E. (4) 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 Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear, In humblest guise have shown. If thou hadst died as honour dies, To shame the world again- Weigh'd in the balance, hero-dust But yet methought the living great Nor deem'd Contempt could thus make mirth Of these, the conquerors of the earth. And she, proud Austria's mournful flower, How bears her breast the torturing hour? Thou throneless homicide? If still she loves thee, hoard that gem, Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle, That Earth is now as free! austerity. Not satisfied with this, he dressed himself in "But who would rise in brightest day To set without one parting ray?"-L. E. (7) It is well known that 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.-L. E. (8) 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.-L. E. |