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.

For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,

Contend not with you on the winged 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.

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 asser

tion;

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.

If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,

Milton appealed to the Avenger, Time, If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,

And makes the word "Miltonic" mean "sublime,"

He deign'd 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.

Think'st thou, could he-the blind Old Man,-arise,

Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze

once more

ago

(Long ere I dreamt of dating from the Brenta)

I was most ready to return a blow, And would not brook at all this sort of thing

In my hot youth-when George the Third was King.

But now at thirty years my hair is gray(I wonder what it will be like at forty? I thought of a peruke the other day--) My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I

Have squander'd my whole summer while 't was May,

And feel no more the spirit to retort; I Have spent my life, both interest and principal,

And deem not, what I deem'd, my soul invincible.

No more no more--Oh! never more on

me

The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,

Which out of all the lovely things we see Extracts emotions beautiful and new,

The illusion's gone for ever, and thou art Insensible, I trust, but none the worse, And in thy stead I've got a deal of judgment,

Though heaven knows how it ever found a lodgment.

My days of love are over; me no more The charms of maid, wife, and still less of widow,

Can make the fool of which they made before,

In short, I must not lead the life I did do;

The credulous hope of mutual minds is o'er,

The copious use of claret is forbid too, So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice. Ambition was my idol, which was broken

Before the shrines of Sorrow, and of Pleasure;

And the two last have left me many a token

O'er which reflection may be made at leisure;

Now, like Friar Bacon's brazen head, I've spoken,

"Time is, Time was, Time's past: -a chymic treasure

Is glittering youth, which I have spent betimes

My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.

What is the end of fame? 't is but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapor;

For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,

And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper,"

To have, when the original is dust.

A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

Canto I. September, 1818. July 15, 1819.

FROM CANTO II

THE SHIPWRECK

"TWAS twilight, and the sunless day went down [St. 49. Over the waste of waters; like a veil, Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown

Of one whose hate is mask'd but to assail. Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,

And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale, And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear

Been their familiar, and now Death was here.

Some trial had been making at a raft,

With little hope in such a rolling sea, A sort of thing at which one would have laugh'd,

If any laughter at such times could be, Unless with people who too much have quaff'd,

And have a kind of wild and horrid glee,

-

Half epileptical, and half hysterical :Their preservation would have been a miracle.

At half-past eight o'clock, booms, hencoops, spars,

And all things, for a chance, had been cast loose

That still could keep afloat the struggling tars,

For yet they strove, although of no great use:

There was no light in heaven but a few stars,

The boats put off o'ercrowded with

their crews;

She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port, And, going down head-foremost-sunk, in short.

Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell

Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave

Then some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell,

As eager to anticipate their grave; And the sea yawn'd around her like a

hell.