Byron.

        Poets they do pursue each theme,
        Under a gentle head of steam,
        Save one who needed fierce fire on,
        The brilliant, pasionate Byron.
        His child Harold's pilgrimage,
        Forever will the world engage;
        He fought with glory to release
        From Turkish yoke the isles of Greece,
        Its glories oft by him were sung,
        This wondrous bard, alas, died young.

    Do what I will, I cannot chant so well
    As other men; and yet my soul is true.
    My hopes are bold; my thoughts are hard to tell,
    But thou can'st read them, and accept them, too,
    Though, half-abash'd, they seem to hide from view.
    I strike the lyre, I sound the hollow shell;
    And why? For comfort, when my thoughts rebel,
    And when I count the woes that must ensue.
    But for this reason, and no other one,
    I dare to look thy way, and bow my head
    To thy sweet name, as sunflower to the sun,
    Though, peradventure, not so wisely fed
    With garden fancies. Tears must now be shed,
    Unnumber'd tears, till life or love be done!

Lo! Byron's tomb!
            Here, deeply pensive, scan
The greatness, and the littleness of man.
In timeless death here Freedom's Martyr sleeps,
Whom, her lost Champion, Greece, desponding, weeps.
The impassion'd Bard, whose Genius, wing'd with flame,
Swept, like a comet, through the sphere of fame,
Dazzling the astonish'd world, lies buried here.
Thus human Glory ends its bright career.
To Byron what high gifts did heaven impart!
An intellect sublime, a feeling heart;
But ah! his wild desires, his passions strong,
Hurried him irresistibly along
Wherever Pleasure call'd, through good, or ill;
No law could bridle his own proud self-will.
O! had but Virtue ruled his mighty mind,
Byron had been the first of human kind!

Bob Southey! You're a poet, poet laureate,
And representative of all the race.
Although 'tis true that you turned out a Tory at
Last, yours has lately been a common case.
And now my epic renegade, what are ye at
With all the lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,

Which pye being opened they began to sing'
(This old song and new simile holds good),
'A dainty dish to set before the King'
Or Regent, who admires such kind of food.
And Coleridge too has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation.
I wish he would explain his explanation.

You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To superse...

i.

Again, O Love! again I make lament,
    And, Arab-like, I pitch my summer-tent
Outside the gateways of the Lord of Song.
I weep and wait, contented all day long
To be the proud possessor of a grief.
It comforts me. It gives me more relief
    Than pleasures give; and, spirit-like in air,
It re-invokes the peace that was so brief.


ii.

It speaks of thee. It keeps me from the lake
    Which else might tempt me; and for thy sweet sake
I shun all evil. I am calmer now
Than when I wooed thee, calmer than the vow
Which made me thine, and yet so fond withal
I start and tremble at the wind's footfall.
    Is it the wind? Or is it mine own past
Come back to life to lure me to its thrall?


iii.

I long to rise and...

While genius endows the sons of men
With eloquence, or with poetic pen,
It leaves them still the frailties of our frame,
It does not curb, but fans th' unrighteous flame.
It gives a wider, nobler range of thought,
But such advantage, oft, is dearly bought.
Man's lower nature troubles scarce the low,
But, like a fiend, at natures high doth go.
Of such a nature, now, these lines shall tell,
Who wrote full many a line, and wrote them well.
Byron, the noble, sensitive and high,
Whose bosom hath not heav'd for thee a sigh?
Whose breast hath not full often given room
To mournful thoughts, for thy untimely doom?
Thy genius soar'd to regions bright and fair,
And thou, such times, were with thy genius there.
And then thy lofty mind, 'neath passion's sway,
Left its...