The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 7 | Page 7

supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only
Blackbird in the dish;
And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
And
tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you
soar too high, Bob,
And fall, for lack of moisture, quite a-dry,
Bob![3]

IV.
And Wordsworth, in a rather long "Excursion,"
(I think the quarto
holds five hundred pages),
Has given a sample from the vasty version

Of his new system[4] to perplex the sages;
'T is poetry-at least by
his assertion,
And may appear so when the dog-star rages--
And he
who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of
Babel.
V.
You--Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company,
have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continued fusion

Of one another's minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most
logical conclusion,
That Poesy has wreaths for you alone:
There is a
narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you'd change
your lakes for Ocean.
VI.
I would not imitate the petty thought,
Nor coin my self-love to so
base a vice,
For all the glory your conversion brought,
Since gold
alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary; was 't for
that you wrought?
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.[5]

You're shabby fellows--true--but poets still,
And duly seated on the
Immortal Hill.
VII.
Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows--
Perhaps some
virtuous blushes;--let them go--
To you I envy neither fruit nor
boughs--
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is
universal, and allows
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow:

Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try
'Gainst you the
question with posterity.

VIII.
For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with
you on the wingéd steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she
chooses,
The fame you envy, and the skill you need;
And, recollect,
a poet nothing loses
In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of
merit--and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future
praise.
IX.
He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim
the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he

Being only injured by his own assertion;
And although here and there
some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,
The
major part of such appellants go
To--God knows where--for no one
else can know.
X.
If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,[6]
Milton appealed to the
Avenger, Time,
If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And
makes the word "Miltonic" mean "_Sublime_,"
_He_ deigned not to
belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
_He_ did
not loathe the Sire to laud the Son,
But closed the tyrant-hater he
begun.
XI.
Think'st thou, could he--the blind Old Man--arise
Like Samuel from
the grave, to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his
prophecies,
Or be alive again--again all hoar
With time and trials,
and those helpless eyes,
And heartless daughters--worn--and
pale[7]--and poor; Would _he_ adore a sultan? _he_ obey
The
intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?[8]

XII.
Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek
young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,

Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that
Tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To
lengthen fetters by another fixed,
And offer poison long already
mixed.
XIII.
An orator of such set trash of phrase
Ineffably--legitimately vile,

That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes--all
nations--condescend to smile,--
Nor even a sprightly blunder's spark
can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,
That turns and
turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual
motion.
XIV.
A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
And botching, patching,
leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid--

States to be curbed, and thoughts to be confined,
Conspiracy or
Congress to be made--
Cobbling at manacles for all mankind--
A
tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
With God and Man's
abhorrence for its gains.
XV.
If we may judge of matter by the mind,
Emasculated to the marrow
_It_
Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
Deeming the
chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many
masters,[9]--blind
To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,

Fearless--because _no_ feeling dwells in ice,
Its very courage
stagnates to a vice.[10]

XVI.
Where shall I turn me not to _view_ its bonds,
For I will never _feel_
them?--Italy!
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds
Beneath the
lie this State-thing breathed o'er thee[11]-- Thy clanking chain, and
Erin's yet green wounds,
Have voices--tongues to cry aloud for me.

Europe has slaves--allies--kings--armies still--
And Southey lives to
sing them very ill.
XVII.
Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate,
In honest simple verse,
this song to you.
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
'T is
that I still retain my "buff and blue;"[12]
My politics as yet are all to
educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,
To keep _one_ creed's a
task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?[13]
Venice, Sept. 16, 1818.
FOOTNOTES:
{3}[1] ["As the Poem is to be published anonymously, _omit_ the
Dedication. I won't attack the dog in the