by Paul Keegan
Splitting some planet with its playful tail,
As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.
The guardian seraphs had retired on high,
Finding their charges past all care below;
Terrestrial business fill’d nought in the sky
Save the recording angel’s black bureau;
Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply
With such rapidity of vice and wo,
That he had stripp’d off both his wings in quills,
And yet was in arrear of human ills.
His business so augmented of late years,
That he was forced, against his will, no doubt,
(Just like those cherubs, earthly ministers,)
For some resource to turn himself about
And claim the help of his celestial peers,
To aid him ere he should be quite worn out
By the increased demand for his remarks;
Six angels and twelve saints were named his clerks.
This was a handsome board – at least for heaven;
And yet they had even then enough to do,
So many conquerors’ cars were daily driven,
So many kingdoms fitted up anew;
Each day too slew its thousands six or seven,
Till at the crowning carnage, Waterloo,
They threw their pens down in divine disgust –
The page was so besmear’d with blood and dust.
This by the way; ’tis not mine to record
What angels shrink from: even the very devil
On this occasion his own work abhorr’d,
So surfeited with the infernal revel:
Though he himself had sharpen’d every sword,
It almost quench’d his innate thirst of evil.
(Here Satan’s sole good work deserves insertion –
’Tis that he has both generals in reversion.)
Let’s skip a few short years of hollow peace,
Which peopled earth no better, hell as wont,
And heaven none – they form the tyrant’s lease,
With nothing but new names subscribed upon’t;
’Twill one day finish: meantime they increase,
‘With seven heads and ten horns,’ and all in front,
Like Saint John’s foretold beast; but ours are born
Less formidable in the head than horn.
In the first year of freedom’s second dawn
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun:
A better farmer ne’er brush’d dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!
He died – but left his subjects still behind,
One half as mad – and t’other no less blind.
He died! – his death made no great stir on earth;
His burial made some pomp; there was profusion
Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great dearth
Of aught but tears – save those shed by 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 melodrame. 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
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
What nature made him at his birth, as bare
As the mere million’s base unmummied clay –
Yet all his spices but prolong decay.
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 uncommon,
Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON Aristomenes. Canto First 1823
The Gods of old are silent on their shore
Since the great Pan expired, and through the roar
Of the Ionian waters broke a dread
Voice which proclaimed ‘the Mighty Pan is dead.’
How much died with him! false or true, the dream
Was beautiful which peopled every stream
With more than finny tenants, and adorned
The woods and waters with coy nymphs that scorned
Pursuing Deities, or in the embrace
Of gods brought forth the high heroic race
Whose names are on the hills and o’er the seas.
(1904)
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON January 22nd 1824. Messalonghi. On This Day I Complete My Thirty Sixth Year 1824
’Tis time this heart should be unmoved
Since others it hath ceased to move,
Yet though I cannot be beloved
Still let me love.
My days are in the yellow leaf
The flowers and fruits of love are gone –
The worm, the canker and the grief
Are mine alone.
The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some Volcanic Isle,
No torch is kindled at its blaze
A funeral pile!
The hope, the fear, the jealous care
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of Love I cannot share
But wear the chain.
But ’t is not thus – and ’t is not here
Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now
Where glory decks the hero’s bier
Or binds his brow.
The Sword – the Banner – and the Field
Glory and Greece around us see!
The Spartan borne upon his shield
Was not more free!
Awake! (not Greece – She is awake!)
Awake my spirit – think through whom
Thy Life blood tracks its parent lake
And then strike home!
Tread those reviving passions down
Unworthy Manhood; – unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of Beauty be.
If thou regret’st thy youth, why live?
The Land of honourable Death
Is here – up to the Field! and give
Away thy Breath.
Seek out – less often sought than found,
A Soldier’s Grave – for thee the best,
Then look around and choose thy ground
And take thy Rest.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON Remember Thee, Remember Thee!
Remember thee, remember thee!
Till Lethe quench life’s burning stream,
Remose and shame shall cling to thee,
And haunt thee like a feverish dream!
Remember thee! Ay, doubt it not;
Thy husband too shall think of thee;
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!
(written 1813)
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY To Jane. The Invitation
Best and brightest, come away –
Fairer far than this fair day
Which like thee to those in sorrow
Comes t
o bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
In its cradle on the brake. –
The brightest hour of unborn spring
Through the winter wandering
Found, it seems, this halcyon morn
To hoar February born;
Bending from Heaven in azure mirth
It kissed the forehead of the earth
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
Away, away from men and towns
To the wild wood and the downs,
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart. –
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor –
‘I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields.
Reflexion, you may come tomorrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow –
You, with the unpaid bill, Despair,
You, tiresome verse-reciter Care,
I will pay you in the grave,
Death will listen to your stave –
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough –
Hope, in pity mock not woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment’s good
After long pain – with all your love
This you never told me of.’
Radiant Sister of the day,
Awake, arise and come away
To the wild woods and the plains
And the pools where winter-rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the Sun –
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sandhills of the sea –
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers, and violets
Which yet join not scent to hue
Crown the pale year weak and new,
When the night is left behind
In the deep east dun and blind
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal Sun. –
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY from Julian and Maddalo. A Conversation
The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,
The goats with the green leaves of budding spring,
Are saturated not – nor Love with tears.
VIRGIL’s Gallus.
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: – a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; – an uninhabitable sea-side
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon, –
Where ’twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight. – I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; – and yet more
Than all, with a remembered friend I love
To ride as then I rode; – for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening North;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aerial merriment…
So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
But flew from brain to brain, – such glee was ours –
Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
None slow enough for sadness: till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
Talk interrupted with such raillery
As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn
The thoughts it would extinguish: – ’twas forlorn
Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell,
The devils held within the dales of Hell
Concerning God, freewill and destiny:
Of all that earth has been or yet may be,
All that vain men imagine or believe,
Or hope can paint or suffering may atchieve,
We descanted, and I (for ever still
Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)
Argued against despondency, but pride
Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light.
– Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,
Over the horizon of the mountains; – Oh,
How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!