The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 35

We will not think of themes like these!

It made Anacreon's song divine: He served--but served Polycrates--[200]

A Tyrant; but our masters then Were still, at least, our countrymen.

12.

The Tyrant of the Chersonese Was Freedom's best and bravest friend; _That_ tyrant was Miltiades!

Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

13.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

On Suli's rock, and Parga's sh.o.r.e, Exists the remnant of a line Such as the Doric mothers bore; And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, The Heracleidan blood might own.[da]

14.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks--[201]

They have a king who buys and sells; In native swords, and native ranks, The only hope of courage dwells; But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, Would break your s.h.i.+eld, however broad.

15.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

Our virgins dance beneath the shade-- I see their glorious black eyes s.h.i.+ne; But gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such b.r.e.a.s.t.s must suckle slaves.

16.

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,[202]

Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine-- Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

Lx.x.xVII.

Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung, The modern Greek, in tolerable verse; If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, Yet in these times he might have done much worse: His strain displayed some feeling--right or wrong; And feeling,[203] in a poet, is the source Of others' feeling; but they are such liars, And take all colours--like the hands of dyers.

Lx.x.xVIII.

But words are things,[204] and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think; 'T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses Instead of speech, may form a lasting link Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper--even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his!

Lx.x.xIX.

And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank, His station, generation, even his nation, Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank In chronological commemoration, Some dull MS. Oblivion long has sank, Or graven stone found in a barrack's station In digging the foundation of a closet,[db]

May turn his name up, as a rare deposit.

XC.

And Glory long has made the sages smile; 'T is something, nothing, words, illusion, wind-- Depending more upon the historian's style Than on the name a person leaves behind: Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle:[205]

The present century was growing blind To the great Marlborough's skill in giving knocks, Until his late Life by Archdeacon c.o.xe.[206]

XCI.

Milton's the Prince of poets--so we say; A little heavy, but no less divine: An independent being in his day-- Learned, pious, temperate in love and wine; But, his life falling into Johnson's way, We're told this great High Priest of all the Nine Was whipped at college--a harsh sire--odd spouse, For the first Mrs. Milton left his house.[207]

XCII.

All these are, _certes_, entertaining facts, Like Shakespeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes; Like t.i.tus' youth, and Caesar's earliest acts;[208]

Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes);[209]

Like Cromwell's pranks;[210]--but although Truth exacts These amiable descriptions from the scribes, As most essential to their Hero's story, They do not much contribute to his glory.

XCIII.

All are not moralists, like Southey, when He prated to the world of "Pantisocracy;"[211]

Or Wordsworth unexcised,[212] unhired, who then Seasoned his pedlar poems with Democracy;[dc]

Or Coleridge[213] long before his flighty pen Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy;[dd]

When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).[214]

XCIV.

Such names at present cut a convict figure, The very Botany Bay in moral geography; Their loyal treason, renegado rigour, Are good manure for their more bare biography; Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger Than any since the birthday of typography; A drowsy, frowzy poem, called the "Excursion,"

Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

XCV.

He there builds up a formidable d.y.k.e Between his own and others' intellect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like Joanna Southcote's s.h.i.+loh[215] and her sect, Are things which in this century don't strike The public mind,--so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale Virginities Have proved but Dropsies, taken for Divinities.

XCVI.

But let me to my story: I must own, If I have any fault, it is digression, Leaving my people to proceed alone, While I soliloquize beyond expression: But these are my addresses from the throne, Which put off business to the ensuing session: Forgetting each omission is a loss to The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

XCVII.

I know that what our neighbours call _"longueurs,"_ (We've not so good a _word_, but have the _thing_, In that complete perfection which insures An epic from Bob Southey every spring--) Form not the true temptation which allures The reader; but 't would not be hard to bring Some fine examples of the _Epopee_, To prove its grand ingredient is _Ennui_.[216]

XCVIII.

We learn from Horace, "Homer sometimes sleeps;"[217]

We feel without him,--Wordsworth sometimes wakes,-- To show with what complacency he creeps, With his dear "_Waggoners_," around his lakes.[218]

He wishes for "a boat" to sail the deeps-- Of Ocean?--No, of air; and then he makes Another outcry for "a little boat,"

And drivels seas to set it well afloat.[219]

XCIX.

If he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain, And Pegasus runs restive in his "Waggon,"

Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain?

Or pray Medea for a single dragon?[220]

Or if, too cla.s.sic for his vulgar brain, He feared his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon?

C.

"Pedlars," and "Boats," and "Waggons!" Oh! ye shades Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?

That trash of such sort not alone evades Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss Floats sc.u.mlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades Of sense and song above your graves may hiss-- The "little boatman" and his _Peter Bell_ Can sneer at him who drew "Achitophel!"[221]