From me a wandering Englishman; I tore
One sonnet, but invoke the muse once more

To hail these gentle hearts which Love has tied,
In Youth, Birth, Beauty, genially allied
And blest with Virtue's soul, and Fortune's store.
A sweeter language, and a luckier bard

Were worthier of your hopes, Auspicious Pair!
And of the sanctity of Hymen's shrine,

But, since I cannot but obey the Fair,
To render your new state your true reward,
May your Fate be like Hers, and unlike mine.

Ravenna, July 31, 1819.
[From an autograph MS. in the possession of the Lady Dorchester,
now for the first time printed.]

SONNET TO THE PRINCE REGENT."

ON THE REPEAL OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD'S
FORFEITURE.

To be the father of the fatherless,

To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and raise
His offspring, who expired in other days

To make thy Sire's sway by a kingdom less,- ii.
This is to be a monarch, and repress

Envy into unutterable praise.

iii.

Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits,
For who would lift a hand, except to bless?
Were it not easy, Sir, and is't not sweet
To make thyself belovéd? and to be
Omnipotent by Mercy's means? for thus

Thy Sovereignty would grow but more complete,

. A despot thou, and yet thy people free,iv.
And by the heart-not hand-enslaving us.

Bologna, August 12, 1819.

[First published, Letters and Journals, ii. 234, 235.]

i. To the Prince Regent on the repeal of the bill of attainder against Lord E. Fitzgerald, June, 1819.

1. ["So the prince has been repealing Lord Fitzgerald's forfeiture?

STANZAS.1

I.

COULD Love for ever
Run like a river,
And Time's endeavour

Be tried in vain

No other pleasure
With this could measure;
And like a treasure 1
We'd hug the chain.
But since our sighing
Ends not in dying,
And, formed for flying,

Love plumes his wing;

Then for this reason

Let's love a season;

But let that season be only Spring.

i. And as a treasure.-[MS. Guiccioli.]

Ecco un' Sonetto! There, you dogs! there's a Sonnet for you: you won't have such as that in a hurry from Mr. Fitzgerald. You may publish it with my name, an ye wool. He deserves all praise, bad and good; it was a very noble piece of principality."-Letter to Murray, August 12, 1819.

297,

For [William Thomas] Fitgerald, see Poetical Works, 1898, note 3 for Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1763-1798), see Letters, 1900, iv. 345, note 1. The royal assent was given to a bill for "restoring Edward Fox Fitzgerald and his sisters Pamela and Lucy to their blood," July 13, 1819. The sonnet was addressed to George IV. when Prince Regent. The title, " To George the Fourth," affixed in 1831, is incorrect.]

1. ["A friend of Lord Byron's, who was with him at Ravenna when he wrote these stanzas, says, They were composed, like many others, with no view of publication, but merely to relieve himself in a moment of suffering. He had been painfully excited by some circumstances which appeared to make it necessary that he should immediately quit Italy; and in the day and the hour that he wrote the song was labouring under an access of fever" (Works, 1832, xii. 317, note 1). Here, too, there is some confusion of dates and places. Byron was at Venice, not at Ravenna, December 1, 1819, when these lines were composed. They were sent, as Lady Blessington testifies, to Kinnaird, and are probably identical with the "mere verses of society," mentioned in the letter to Murray of May 8, 1820. The last stanza reflects the mood of a letter to the Countess Guiccioli, dated November 25 (1819), I go to save you, and leave a country insupportable to me without you" (Letters, 1900, iv. 379, note 2).}

2.

When lovers parted
Feel broken-hearted,
And, all hopes thwarted,
Expect to die;
A few years older,
Ah! how much colder
They might behold her
For whom they sigh!
When linked together,
In every weather,i
They pluck Love's feather
From out his wing-

He'll stay for ever,.

But sadly shiver

Without his plumage, when past the Spring.

3.

Like Chiefs of Faction,

His life is action

A formal paction

That curbs his reign,

Obscures his glory,

Despot no more, he
Such territory

Quits with disdain.
Still, still advancing,
With banners glancing,
His power enhancing,

He must move on-
Repose but cloys him,
Retreat destroys him,

Love brooks not a degraded throne.

i. Through every weather

We pluck.-MS. G.]

ii. He'll sadly shiver

And droop for ever,

Shorn of the plumage which sped his spring.—[MS. G.]

iii.

4.

Wait not, fond lover!
Till years are over,
And then recover

As from a dream.
While each bewailing
The other's failing,
With wrath and railing,

All hideous seem-
While first decreasing,
Yet not quite ceasing,
Wait not till teasing,

All passion blight :
If once diminished

Love's reign is finished

Then part in friendship,-and bid good-night.

i.

5.

So shall Affection
To recollection

The dear connection

Bring back with joy:
You had not waited.
Till, tired or hated,
Your passions sated
Began to cloy.
Your last embraces

Leave no cold traces

The same fond faces

As through the past:

And eyes, the mirrors

Of your sweet errors,

Reflect but rapture-not least though last.

His reign is finished

One last embrace, then, and bid good-night.—[MS. G.] ii. You have not waited

Till tired and hated

All passions sated.—[MS. G.]

6.

True, separations".
Ask more than patience;

What desperations

From such have risen!

But yet remaining,

What is't but chaining

Hearts which, once waning,

Beat 'gainst their prison?
Time can but cloy love,
And use destroy love:
The wingéd boy, Love,
Is but for boys-
You'll find it torture

Though sharper, shorter,

To wean, and not wear out your joys.

December 1, 1819.

[First published, New Monthly Magazine, 1832,

vol. xxxv. pp. 310-312.]

ODE TO A LADY WHOSE LOVER WAS KILLED BY A BALL, WHICH AT THE SAME TIME SHIVERED A PORTRAIT NEXT HIS HEART.

MOTTO.

On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie, mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu qu'une.-[Réflexions... du Duc de la Rochefoucauld, No. ĺxxiii.]

I.

LADY! in whose heroic port

And Beauty, Victor even of Time,
And haughty lineaments, appear
Much that is awful, more that's dear—
Wherever human hearts resort

There must have been for thee a Court,
And Thou by acclamation Queen,
Where never Sovereign yet had been.

i. True separations.—[MS. G.}