I've tried another's fetters too, With charms perchance as fair to view; "Twould soothe to take one lingering view, LINES TO MR. HODGSON. HUZZA! Hodgson, we are going, Bend the canvas o'er the mast. Hark! the farewell gun is fired; Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here's a rascal Come to task all, Prying from the custom-house; Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket, Ere we sail on board the Packet. Now our boatmen quit their mooring, Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks; All are wrangling, Now we've reach'd her, lo! the captain, Did at once my vessel fill.""Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still : Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet." Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you? On Braganza Help!"-"a couplet?"-"No, a cup Of warm water-" "What's the matter?" "Zounds! my liver's coming up: I shall not survive the racket Of this brutal Lisbon Packet." Now at length we're off for Turkey, May unship us in a crack. Great and small things, Let's have laughing Who the devil cares for more? Some good wine! and who would lack it, Even on board the Lisbon Packet? Falmouth Roads, June 30th, 1809. LINES IN THE TRAVELLERS' BOOK AT ORCHOMENUS. IN THIS BOOK A TRAVELLER HAD WRITTEN "FAIR Albion, smiling, sees her son depart BENEATH WHICH LORD BYRON INSERTED THE FOLLOWING REPLY: • Thus corrected by himself in a copy of the Miscellany-the two last lines THE modest bard, like many a bard unknown, xing, originally, as follows: "Though wheresoe'er my bark may run, love but thee, I love but one." Rhymes on our names, but wisely hides his own; "OH! banish care "-such ever be "Twere long to tell, and vain to hear, But let this pass-I'll whine no more, But if, in some succeeding year, When Britain's "May is in the sere," Thou hear'st of one, whose deepening crimes Suit with the sablest of the times, ON LORD THURLOW'S POEMS. DEDICATED TO MR. ROGERS. WHEN Thurlow this damn'd nonsense sent, (I hope I am not violent,) Nor men nor gods knew what he meant. And since not ev'n our Rogers' praise- To me, divine Apollo, grant-0! Hermilda's first and second canto, I'm fitting up a new portmanteau; And thus to furnish decent lining, TO LORD THURLOW. "I lay my branch of laurel down, Then thus to form Apollo's crown, Let every other bring his own." May, 1813. Lord Thurlow's Lines to Mr. Rogers. "I lay my branch of laurel down.” Thou "lay thy branch of laurel down!" Why, what thou'st stole is not enow; And, were it lawfully thine own, Does Rogers want it most, or thou? Keep to thyself thy wither'd bough, Or send it back to Doctor DonneWere justice done to both, I trow, He'd have but little, and thou-none. "Then thus to form Apollo's crown." A crown! why, twist it how you will, Thy chaplet must be foolscap still. When next you visit Delphi's town, Inquire among your fellow-lodgers, They'll tell you Phoebus gave his crown, Some years before your birth, to Rogers. "Let every other bring his own.” When coals to Newcastle are carried, And owls sent to Athens as wonders, From his spouse when the Regent's unmarried, Or Liverpool weeps o'er his blunders; When Tories and Whigs cease to quarrel, When Castlereagh's wife has an heir, Then Rogers shall ask us for laurel, And thou shalt have plenty to spare 566 TO THOMAS MOORE. THE DEVIL'S DRIVE. lines, the only copy that Lord Byron, I believe, ever wrote, he presented to Lord Holland. Though with a good deal of vigor and imagination, it is for the most part, rather clumsily executed, wanting the point and conden sation of those clever verses of Mr. Coleridge which Lord Byron, adopting a notion long prevalent, has attributed to Professor Porson. There are however, some of the stanzas of "The Devil's Drive" well worth preserving.]-Moore. WRITTEN THE EVENING BEFORE HIS VISIT, IN COM-[Of this strange, wild poem, which extends to about two hundred and fifty But now to my letter-to yours 'tis an answer- And for Sotheby's Blues have deserted Sam Rogers; FRAGMENT OF AN EPISTLE TO WHAT say I?"-not a syllable further in prose; I'm your man "of all measures," dear Tom,-so here goes! Here goes, for a swim on the stream of old Time, We are smother'd, at least, in respectable mud, Walk'd out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea, man saw. THE Devil return'd to hell by two, And he staid at home till five; When he dined on some homicides done in ragout, I have a state-coach at Carlton House, But they're lent to two friends, who make me amends And they handle their reins with such a grace, "So now for the earth to take my chance." And rested his hoof on a turnpike road, But first as he flew, I forgot to say, And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare, And so soft to his ear was the cry of despair, The papers have told you, no doubt, of the fusses, That he perch'd on a mountain of slain; The fetes, and the gapings to get at these Russes,And he gazed with delight from its growing height, Of his Majesty's suite, up from coachman to Het-Nor often on earth had he seen such a sight, man, Nor his work done half as well: And what dignity decks the flat face of the great For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead, man. I saw him, last week, at two balls and a party,- That it blushed like the waves of hell! Then loudly, and wildly, and long laugh'd he; "Methinks they have here little need of me!" The Czar's look, I own, was much brighter and But the softest note that soothed his ear Was the sound of a widow sighing: And she look'd to heaven with that frenzied air, |