AWAY, AWAY, YE NOTES OF WO. AWAY, away, ye notes of wo! Be silent, thou once soothing strain, I dare not trust those sounds again. On what I am-on what I was. The voice that made those sounds more sweet A dirge, an anthem o'er the dead! Is worse than discord to my heart! "Tis silent all!-but on my ear The well-remember'd echoes thrill; I hear a voice I would not hear, A voice that now might well be still: Yet oft my doubting soul 'twill shake; Even slumber owns its gentle tone, Till consciousness will vainly wake To listen, though the dream be flown. Sweet Thyrza! waking as in sleep, Then turn'd from earth its tender beam. That scatter'd gladness o'er his path. December 6, 1811.1 Though gay companions o'er the bowl On many a lone and lovely night And sickness shrunk my throbbing veins, ""Tis comfort still," I faintly said, "That Thyrza cannot know my pains:" Like freedom to the time-worn slave, A boon 'tis idle then to give, Relenting Nature vainly gave My life, when Thyrza ceased to live! My Thyrza's pledge in better days, When love and life alike were new! How different now thou meet'st my gaze! How tinged by time with sorrow's hue! The heart that gave itself with thee Is silent-ah, were mine as still! Though cold as e'en the dead can be, It feels, it sickens with the chill. Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token! More hallow'd when its hope is fled: EUTHANASIA. WHEN Time, or soon or late, shall bring The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead, Oblivion! may thy languid wing Wave gently o'er my dying bed! No band of friends or heirs be there, To feel, or feign, decorous wo. With no officious mourners near: In her who lives and him who dies. E'en Pain itself should smile on thee. But vain the wish-for Beauty still Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; And woman's tears, produced at will, Deceive in life, unman in death. Then lonely be my latest hour, Without regret, without a groan; For thousands Death hath ceased to lower, And pain been transient or unknown. "Ay, but to die, and go," alas! Where all have gone, and all must go! To be the nothing that I was Ere born to life and living wo! Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, AND thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not: It is enough for me to prove That what I loved, and long must love, Like common earth can rot; To me there needs no stone to tell, 'Tis Nothing that I loved so well. Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou. Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow: And, what were worse, thou canst not see The better days of life were ours; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, The silence of that dreamless sleep Nor need I to repine That all those charms have pass'd away, The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd Since earthly eye but ill can bear I know not if I could have borne The night that follow'd such a morn Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd, And thou wert lovely to the last; Extinguish'd, not decay'd; As stars that shoot along the sky As once I wept, if I could weep, Uphold thy drooping head; Yet how much less it were to gain, And more thy buried love endears February, 1812. IF SOMETIMES IN THE HAUNTS OF MEN. IF sometimes in the haunts of men Thine image from my breast may fade, The semblance of thy gentle shade: The plaint she dare not speak before. Oh, pardon that in crowds awhile I waste one thought I owe to thee, Nor deem that memory less dear, I would not fools should overhear If not the goblet pass unquaff'd, From all her troubled visions free, March 16, 1812. FROM THE FRENCH. ÆGLE, beauty and poet, has two little crimes; She makes her own face, and does not make her rhymes. LINES TO A LADY WEEPING.2 WEEP, daughter of a royal line, A Sire's disgrace, a realm's decay; Ah! happy if each tear of thine Could wash a father's fault away! Weep-for thy tears are Virtue's tears- And be each drop in future years LINES WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF THE "PLEASURES OF MEMORY." ABSENT or present, still to thee, My friend, what magic spells belong! As all can tell, who share, like me, But when the dreaded hour shall come How fondly will she then repay Thy homage offer'd at her shrine, April 19, 1812 March, 1812. THE CHAIN I GAVE. THE chain I gave was fair to view, 1[We know not whether the reader should understand the cornelian heart of these lines to be the same with that of which some notices are given at p. 408.] [This impromptu owed its birth to an on dit, that the late Princess Charlotte of Wales burst into tears on hearing that the Whigs had found it impossible to put together a cabinet, at the period of Mr. Perceval's death. They were appended to the first edition of "The Corsair," and excited a sensation, as it is called, marvellously disproportionate to their length,-or, we may add, their merit. The ministerial prints raved for two months on end, in the most foulmouthed vituperation of the poet, and all that belonged to him-the Morning Post even announced a motion in the House of Lords-" and all this," Lord Byron writes to Mr. Moore, "as Bedreddin in the Arabian Nights remarks, for making a cream tart with pepper: how odd, that eight lines should have given birth, I really think, to eight thousand!"] ["The Lines to a Lady weeping' must go with 'The Corsair.' I care nothing for consequences on this point. My politics are to me like a young mistress to an old man ; the worse they grow, the fonder I become of them."-Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, Jan. 22, 1814. "On my return, I find all the newspapers in hysterics, and town in an uproar, on the avowal and republication of two stanzas on Princess Charlotte's weeping at Regency's speech to Lauderdale in ADDRESS, SPOKEN AT THE OPENING OF DRURY-LANE THEATRE, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1812. In one dread night our city saw, and sigh'd, Apollo sink, and Shakspeare cease to reign. 1812. They are daily at it still:-some of the abuse good, -all of it hearty. They talk of a motion in our House upon it-be it so."-Byron Diary, 1814.] ["When Rogers does talk, he talks well; and, on all subjects of taste, his delicacy of expression is pure as bes poetry. If you enter his house-his drawing room-his library-you of yourself, say, this is not the dwelling of a common mind. There is not a gem, a coin, a book throwa aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor."Byron Diary, 1813.] [The reader will recall Collins's exquisite lines on the tomb of Thomson: "In yonder grave a Druid lies," &c.) [The theatre in Drury Lane, which was opened, in 1747, with Dr. Johnson's masterly address, beginning,"When Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes First rear'd the Stage, immortal Shakspeare rose," and witnessed the last glories of Garrick, having fallen into decay, was rebuilt in 1794. The new building perished by fire in 1811; and the Managers, in their anxiety that the opening of the present edifice should be distingirshed by some composition of at least equal merit, advertised in the newspapers for a general competition. Scores of addresses, not one tolerable, showered on their desk, and they were sad despair, when Lord Holland interfered, and, not without Ye who beheld, (oh! sight admired and mourn'd, Whose radiance mock'd the ruin it adorn'd!) Through clouds of fire the massy fragments riven, Lake Israel's pillar, chase the night from heaven; Saw the long column of revolving flames Shake its red shadow o'er the startled Thames,' While thousands, throng'd around the burning dome, Shrank back appall'd and trembled for their home, As glared the volumed blaze, and ghastly shone The skies, with lightnings awful as their own, Till blackening ashes and the lonely wall Usurp'd the Muse's realm, and mark'd her fall; Say-shall this new, nor less aspiring pile, Rear'd where once rose the mightiest in our isle, Know the same favor which the former knew, A shrine for Shakspeare-worthy him and you? Yes-it shall be-the magic of that name Defies the scythe of time, the torch of flame; On the same spot still consecrates the scene, And bids the Drama be where she hath been: This fabric's birth attests the potent spellIndulge our honest pride, and say, How well! As soars this fane to emulate the last, Oh! might we draw our omens from the past, Some hour propitious to our prayers may boast Names such as hallow still the dome we lost. On Drury first your Siddons' thrilling art O'erwhelm'd the gentlest, storm'd the sternest heart. On Drury, Garrick's latest laurels grew; Here your last tears retiring Roscius drew, Sigh'd his last thanks, and wept his last adieu : But still for living wit the wreaths may bloom, That only waste their odors o'er the tomb. Such Drury claim'd and claims-nor you refuse One tribute to revive his slumbering muse; With garlands deck your own Menander's head! Nor hoard your honors idly for the dead! Dear are the days which made our annals bright, Ere Garrick fled, or Brinsley ceased to write. Heirs to their labors, like all high-born heirs, Vain of our ancestry as they of theirs; While thus Remembrance borrows Banquo's glass To claim the sceptred shadows as they pass, And we the mirror hold, where imaged shine Immortal names, emblazon'd on our line, difficulty, prevailed on Lord Byron to write these verses"at the risk," as he said, "of offending a hundred scribblers and a discerning public." The admirable jeu d'esprit of the Messrs. Smith will long preserve the memory of the "Re|jected Addresses."] "By the by, the best view of the said fire (which I myself saw from a house-top in Covent Garden) was at Westminster Bridge, from the reflection of the Thames."-Lord Byron to Lord Holland.) [Originally, "Ere Garrick died," &c.-"By the by, one of my corrections in the copy sent yesterday has dived into the bathos some sixty fathom When Garrick died, and Brinsley ceased to write.' Ceasing to live is a much more serious concern, and ought not to be first. Second thoughts in every thing are best; but, in rhyme, third and fourth don't come amiss. I always scrawl in this way, and smooth as fast as i can, but never sufficiently; and, latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning. When I began Childe Harold,' I had never tried Spenser's measure, and now I cannot scribble in any other."-Lord Byron to Lord Holland.) [The following lines were omitted by the Committee:-- Pause-ere their feebler offspring you condemn, Reflect how hard the task to rival them! Friends of the stage! to whom both Players and Plays And made us blush that you forbore to blame; This greeting o'er, the ancient rule obey'd, PARENTHETICAL ADDRESS. BY DR. PLAGIARY. Half stolen, with acknowledgments, to be spoken in an inarticulate voice by Master P. at the opening of the next new theatre. Stolen parts marked with the inverted commas of quotation-thus "———”. "WHEN energizing objects men pursue," As if Sir Fretful wrote "the slumberous" verse, Yet at the thing you'd never be amazed," Knew you the rumpus which the author raised; 'Nor even here your smiles would be repress'd," 66 "Dread metaphors which open wounds" like issues! If you decree, the stage must condescend The past reproach let present scenes refute, Nor shift from man to babe, from babe to brute." "Is Whitbread," said Lord Byron. "determined to castrate all my cavalry lines? I do implore, for my own gratification, one lash on those accursed quadrupeds-' a long shot, Sir Lucius, if you love me.'"] 4 [" Soon after the Rejected Addresses' scene in 1821, I met Sheridan. In the course of dinner, he said, 'Lord Byron, did you know that amongst the writers of addresses was Whitbread himself? I answered by an inquiry of what sort of an address he had made. Of that.' replied Sheridan, I remember little, except that there was a phaniz in it.'- A phœnix!! Well, how did he describe it ?Like a poulterer,' answered Sheridan: it was green, and yellow, and red, and blue: he did not let us off for a single feather."-Byron Letters, 1821.] [Among the addresses sent in to the Drury Lane Committee was one by Dr. Busby, entitled "A Monologue," of which the above is a parody. It began as follows:- "When energizing objects men pursue, "And sleeping pangs awake-and-but away," (Confound me if I know what next to say.) "Lo Hope reviving re-expands her wings," 66 And Master G-recites what Doctor Busby sings!— "In arts and sciences our isle hath shone," With "smiles," and "lyres," and "pencils," and much more. [Cupid," These, if we win the Graces, too, we gain Disgraces, too! "inseparable train !" "Three who have stolen their witching airs from (You all know what I mean, unless you're stupid :) "Harmonious throng" that I have kept in petto, Now to produce in a "divine sestetto"!! "While Poesy," with these delightful doxies, "Sustains her part" in all the "upper" boxes! "Thus lifted gloriously, you'll soar along," Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; "Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play," (For this last line George had a holiday.) "Old Drury never, never soar'd so high," So says the manager, and so say I. "But hold, you say, this self-complacent boast;" Is this the poem which the public lost? [pride;" "True true that lowers at once our mounting But lo!-the papers print what you deride. I wish I had them, then, with all my heart. VERSES FOUND IN A SUMMER-HOUSE WHEN Dryden's fool, "unknowing what he sought," Did modern swains, possess'd of Cymon's powers, 1 [In Warwickshire.] 2 [See Cymon and Iphigenia.] [ The sequel of a temporary liaison, formed by Lord Byron during his gay but brief career in London, occasioned the composition of this Impromptu. On the cessation of the connection, the fair one, actuated by jealousy, called one |