The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. Poetry

Lord knows when we shall come back!
Breezes foul and tempests murky
May unship us in a crack.
But, since Life at most a jest is,
As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is,
Then laugh on – as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
Great and small things,
Sick or well, at sea or shore;
While we're quaffing,
Let's have laughing —
Who the devil cares for more? —
Some good wine! and who would lack it,
Ev'n on board the Lisbon Packet?

    Falmouth Roads, June 30, 1809.
    [First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 230-232.]

[TO DIVES.[7 - [Dives was William Beckford. See Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza xxii. line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 37, note 1.]] A FRAGMENT.]

Unhappy Dives! in an evil hour
'Gainst Nature's voice seduced to deeds accurst!
Once Fortune's minion now thou feel'st her power;
Wrath's vial on thy lofty head hath burst.
In Wit, in Genius, as in Wealth the first,
How wondrous bright thy blooming morn arose!
But thou wert smitten with th' unhallowed thirst
Of Crime unnamed, and thy sad noon must close
In scorn and solitude unsought the worst of woes.

    1809.
    [First published, Lord Byron's Works, 1833, xvii. 241.]

FAREWELL PETITION TO R. C. H., ESQRE

O thou yclep'd by vulgar sons of Men
Cam Hobhouse![8 - [For John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869), afterwards Lord Broughton de Gyfford, see Letters, 1898, i. 163, note i.]] but by wags Byzantian Ben!
Twin sacred titles, which combined appear
To grace thy volume's front, and gild its rear,
Since now thou put'st thyself and work to Sea
And leav'st all Greece to Fletcher[9 - [Fletcher was an indifferent traveller, and sighed for "a' the comforts of the saut-market." See Byron's letters to his mother, November 12, 1809, June 28, 1810. —Letters, 1898, i. 256, 281.]] and to me,
Oh, hear my single muse our sorrows tell,
One song for self and Fletcher quite as well —

First to the Castle of that man of woes
Dispatch the letter which I must enclose,
And when his lone Penelope shall say
Why, where, and wherefore doth my William stay?
Spare not to move her pity, or her pride —
By all that Hero suffered, or defied;
The chicken's toughness, and the lack of ale
The stoney mountain and the miry vale
The Garlick steams, which half his meals enrich,
The impending vermin, and the threatened Itch,
That ever breaking Bed, beyond repair!
The hat too old, the coat too cold to wear,
The Hunger, which repulsed from Sally's door
Pursues her grumbling half from shore to shore,
Be these the themes to greet his faithful Rib
So may thy pen be smooth, thy tongue be glib!

This duty done, let me in turn demand
Some friendly office in my native land,
Yet let me ponder well, before I ask,
And set thee swearing at the tedious task.

First the Miscellany![10 - [Hobhouse's Miscellany (otherwise known as the Miss-sell-any) was published in 1809, under the title of Imitations and Translations from The Ancient and Modern Classics. Byron contributed nine original poems. The volume was not a success. "It foundered … in the Gulph of Lethe." – Letter to H. Drury, July 17, 1811, Letters, 1898, i. 319.]]– to Southwell town
Per coach for Mrs. Pigot frank it down,
So may'st them prosper in the paths of Sale,[11 - [The word "Sale" may have a double meaning. There may be an allusion to George Sale, the Orientalist, and translator of the Koran.]]
And Longman smirk and critics cease to rail.

All hail to Matthews![12 - ["In Matthews I have lost my 'guide, philosopher, and friend.'" – Letter to R. C. Dallas, September 7, 1811, Letters, 1898, ii. 25. (For Charles Skinner Matthews, see Letters, 1898, i. 150, note 3.)]] wash his reverend feet,
And in my name the man of Method greet, —
Tell him, my Guide, Philosopher, and Friend,
Who cannot love me, and who will not mend,
Tell him, that not in vain I shall assay
To tread and trace our "old Horatian way,"[13 - [Compare —"In short, the maxim for the amorous tribe isHoratian, 'Medio tu tutissimus ibis.'"Don Juan, Canto V. stanza xvii. lines 8, 9. The "doctrine" is Horatian, but the words occur in Ovid, Metam., lib. ii. line 137. —Poetical Works, 1902, vi. 273, note 2.]]
And be (with prose supply my dearth of rhymes)
What better men have been in better times.

Here let me cease, for why should I prolong
My notes, and vex a Singer with a Song?
Oh thou with pen perpetual in thy fist!
Dubbed for thy sins a stark Miscellanist,
So pleased the printer's orders to perform
For Messrs. Longman, Hurst and Rees and Orme.
Go – Get thee hence to Paternoster Row,
Thy patrons wave a duodecimo!
(Best form for letters from a distant land,
It fits the pocket, nor fatigues the hand.)
Then go, once more the joyous work commence[14 - [Hobhouse's Journey through Albania and other Provinces of Turkey, 4to, was published by James Cawthorn, in 1813.]]
With stores of anecdote, and grains of sense,
Oh may Mammas relent, and Sires forgive!
And scribbling Sons grow dutiful and live!

    Constantinople, June 7th, 1810.
    [First published, Murray's Magazine, 1887, vol. i. pp. 290, 291.]

TRANSLATION OF THE NURSE'S DOLE IN THE MEDEA OF EURIPIDES