But where's the beam so sweetly straying (2) Which gave a lustre to its blue,

Like Luna o'er the ocean playing?
Sweet copy! far more dear to me,
Lifeless, unfeeling as thou art,
Than all the living forms could be,

Save her who placed thee next my heart.

She placed it, sad, with needless fear,

Lest Time might shake my wavering soul, Unconscious that her image there

Held every sense in fast control.

Thro' hours, thro' years, thro' time, 't will
My hope, in gloomy moments, raise; [cheer;
In life's last conflict 't will appear,
And meet my fond expiring gaze.

TO LESBIA.

LESBIA! since far from you I 've ranged,
Our souls with fond affection glow not;
You say 't is I, not you, have changed,
I'd tell you why, but yet I know not.
Your polish'd brow no cares have crost ;
And, Lesbia! we are not much older,
Since, trembling, first my heart I lost,

Or told my love, with hope grown bolder.

Sixteen was then our utmost age,

Two years have lingering past away, love! And now new thoughts our minds engage, At least I feel disposed to stray, love!

'Tis I that am alone to blame,

I, that am guilty of love's treason; Since your sweet breast is still the same, Caprice must be my only reason.

I do not, love! suspect your truth,

With jealous doubt my bosom heaves not; Warm was the passion of my youth,

One trace of dark deceit it leaves not.

No, no, my flame was not pretended;
For, oh! I loved you most sincerely;
And though our dream at last is ended-
My bosom still esteems you dearly.

No more we meet in yonder bowers ;
Absence has made me prone to roving;
But older, firmer, hearts than ours
Have found monotony in loving.

Your cheek's soft bloom is unimpair'd,

New beauties still are daily bright'ning, Your eye for conquest beams prepared,

The forge of Love's resistless lightning. Arm'd thus, to make their bosoms bleed,

Many will throng to sigh like me, love ! More constant they may prove, indeed; Fonder, alas! they ne'er can be, love!

TO WOMAN.

WOMAN! experience might have told me
That all must love thee who behold thee:
Surely experience might have taught
Thy firmest promises are nought;

But, placed in all thy charms before me,
All I forget, but to adore thee.

Oh, memory! thou choicest blessing,

When join'd with hope, when still possessing;
But how much cursed by every lover
When hope is fled and passion 's over!
Woman, that fair and fond deceiver,
How prompt are striplings to believe her!
How throbs the pulse when first we view
The eye that rolls in glossy blue,
Or sparkles black, or mildly throws
A beam from under hazel brows!
How quick we credit every oath,
And hear her plight the willing troth!
Fondly we hope 't will last for aye,
When, lo! she changes in a day.

This record will for ever stand,

LINES ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY.

[As the author was discharging his pistols in a garden, two ladies passing near the spot were alarmed by the sound of a bullet hissing

near them; to one of whom the following stanzas were addressed the next morning.] (1)

DOUBTLESS, Sweet girl! the hissing lead,
Wafting destruction o'er thy charms,
And hurtling (2) o'er thy lovely head,

Has fill'd that breast with fond alarms.
Surely some envious demon's force,

Vex'd to behold such beauty here,
Impell❜d the bullet's viewless course,
Diverted from its first career.
Yes! in that nearly fatal hour

The ball obey'd some hell-born guide;
But Heaven, with interposing power,
In pity turn'd the death aside.
Yet, as perchance one trembling tear
Upon that thrilling bosom fell;
Which I, the unconscious cause of fear,
Extracted from its glistening cell:
Say, what dire penance can atone

For such an outrage done to thee?
Arraign'd before thy beauty's throne,
What punishment wilt thou decree?
Might I perform the judge's part,

The sentence I should scarce deplore;
It only would restore a heart

Which but belong'd to thee before.
The least atonement I can make

Is to become no longer free;
Henceforth I breathe but for thy sake,

Thou shalt be all in all to me.
But thou, perhaps, may'st now reject
Such expiation of my guilt:
Come then, some other mode elect;

Let it be death, or what thou wilt.
Choose then, relentless! and I swear
Nought shall thy dread decree prevent;
Yet hold-one little word forbear!

Let it be aught but banishment.

(1) The occurrence took place at Southwell, and the beautifu. lady to whom the lines were addressed was Miss Houson.-E. Pistol-firing at a mark was ever a favourite pastime of Lord Byron. "He always," says Captain Medwin, in his Conversations, "has pistols in his holster, and eight or ten pairs, by the first makers in London, carried by his courier." Moore, also says" Such a passion, indeed, had he for arms of every description, that there generally lay a small sword by the side of his bed, with which he used to amuse himself, as he lay awake in the morning, by thrusting it through the bed-hangings. The person who purchased the bed at the sale of Mrs. Byron's furniture, on her removal to Newstead, gave out, with the view of attaching a stronger interest to the holes in the curtains, that they were pierced by the same sword with which the old Lord had killed Mr. Chaworth, and which his descendant always kept

THE roses of love glad the garden of life,

Though nurtured 'mid weeds dropping pestilent dew,

Till time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife,
Or prunes them for ever, in love's last adieu!
In vain with endearments we soothe the sad heart,
In vain do we vow for an age to be true;
The chance of an hour may command us to part,
Or death disunite us in love's last adieu !
Still Hope, breathing peace through the grief-swol-
len breast,

Will whisper," Our meeting we yet may renew:"
With this dream of deceit half our sorrow 's represt,
Nor taste we the poison of love's last adieu !
Oh! mark you yon pair: in the sunshine of youth
Love twined round their childhood his flow'rs as
they grew;

They flourish awhile in the season of truth,

Till chill'd by the winter of love's last adieu! Sweet lady! why thus doth a tear steal its way Down a cheek which outrivals thy bosom in hue?

Yet why do I ask ?—to distraction a prey,

Thy reason has perish'd with love's last adieu ! Oh! who is yon misanthrope, shunning mankind? From cities to caves of the forest he flew : There, raving, he howls his complaint to the wind; The mountains reverberate love's last adieu! Now hate rules a heart which in love's easy chains Once passion's tumultuous blandishments knew; Despair now inflames the dark tide of his veins; He ponders in frenzy on love's last adieu! How he envies the wretch with a soul wrapt in steel!

His pleasures are scarce, yet his troubles are few, Who laughs at the pang that he never can feel,

And dreads not the anguish of love's last adieu! Youth flies, life decays, even hope is o'ercast;

No more with love's former devotion we sue :

as a memorial by his bed-side. Such is the ready process by which fiction is often engrafted upon fact."

"Lord Byron had one little hobby, which he has shared, I believe, with many distinguished men. He had a great fondness for curious arms of every description. He never saw a handsome or a useful sabre, a curious or a good pair of pistols, or a carbine of a peculiar construction, but he coveted it, and generally contrived to obtain it, at however great a cost. He bad, consequently, a perfect magazine of curious and extraordinary, but at the same time useful, weapons."- Captain Parry. (2) This word is used by Gray, in his poem of The Fatal Sislers:

"Iron sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles through the darken'd air."

He spreads his young wing, he retires with the blast;
The shroud of affection is love's last adieu !
In this life of probation, for rapture divine
Astrea declares that some penance is due;
From him who has worshipp'd at love's gentle
shrine,

The atonement is ample in love's last adieu !
Who kneels to the god, on his altar of light
Must myrtle and cypress alternately strew :
His myrtle, an emblem of purest delight;

His cypress, the garland of love's last adieu!

TO A LADY,

WHO PRESENTED TO THE AUTHOR A LOCK OF
HAIR BRAIDED WITH HIS OWN, AND APPOINTED
A NIGHT IN DECEMBER TO MEET HIM IN THE
GARDEN. (1)

THESE locks, which fondly thus entwine,
In firmer chains our hearts confine
Than all the unmeaning protestations
Which swell with nonsense love orations.
Our love is fix'd, I think we've proved it,
Nor time, nor place, nor art, have moved it;
Then wherefore should we sigh and whine,
With groundless jealousy repine,
With silly whims and fancies frantic,
Merely to make our love romantic?
Why should you weep, like Lydia Languish,
And fret with self-created anguish ?
Or doom the lover you have chosen,
On winter nights to sigh half-frozen;
In leafless shades to sue for pardon,
Only because the scene's a garden ?
For gardens seem, by one consent,
Since Shakspeare set the precedent,
Since Juliet first declared her passion,
To form the place of assignation. (2)
Oh! would some modern muse inspire,
And seat her by a sea-coal fire;

Or had the bard at Christmas written,
And laid the scene of love in Britain,
He surely, in commiseration,
Had changed the place of declaration.
In Italy I've no objection;

Warm nights are proper for reflection;
But here our climate is so rigid,
That love itself is rather frigid!
Think on our chilly situation,
And curb this rage for imitation;

(1) See ante, p. 18, col. 1, note 1. — E.

(3) In the above little piece, the author has been accused by seme candid readers of introducing the name of a lady from whom he was some hundred miles distant at the time this was written; and poor Juliet, who has slept so long in "the tomb of all the Capulets," has been converted, with a trifling alteration of her name, into an English damsel, walking in a garden of their own

Then let us meet, as oft we've done,
Beneath the influence of the sun;
Or, if at midnight I must meet you,
Within your mansion let me greet you :
There we can love for hours together,
Much better, in such snowy weather,
Than placed in all the Arcadian groves
That ever witness'd rural loves.
Then, if my passion fail to please,
Next night I'll be content to freeze;
No more I'll give a loose to laughter,
But curse my fate for ever after. (3)

TO MARION.

MARION! why that pensive brow?
What disgust to life hast thou ?
Change that discontented air;
Frowns become not one so fair.
'T is not love disturbs thy rest,
Love's a stranger to thy breast;
He in dimpling smiles appears,
Or mourns in sweetly timid tears,
Or bends the languid eyelid down,
But shuns the cold forbidding frown.
Then resume thy former fire,
Some will love, and all admire;
While that icy aspect chills us.
Nought but cool indifference thrills us,
Wouldst thou wandering hearts beguile ?
Smile at least, or seem to smile.
Eyes like thine were never meant
To hide their orbs in dark restraint;
Spite of all thou fain wouldst say,
Still in truant beams they play.
Thy lips-but here my modest Muse
Her impulse chaste must needs refuse:
She blushes, curtsies, frowns,-in short she
Dreads lest the subject should transport me;
And, flying off in search of reason,
Brings prudence back in proper season.
All I shall therefore say (whate'er

I think, is neither here nor there)

Is, that such lips, of looks endearing,
Were form'd for better things than sneering.
Of soothing compliments divested,
Advice at least 's disinterested:
Such is my artless song to thee,
From all the flow of flattery free.
Counsel like mine is as a brother's,
My heart is given to some others;

creation, during the month of December, in a village where the author never passed a winter. Such has been the candour of some ingenious critics! We would advise these liberal commentators on taste and arbiters of decorum to read Shakspeare.

(3) Having heard that a very severe and indelicate censure has been passed on the above poem, I beg leave to reply in a quotation from an admired work, Carr's Stranger in France.-"As

That is to say, unskill'd to cozen,
It shares itself among a dozen.
Marion, adieu! oh, pr'ythee slight not
This warning, though it may delight not;
And, lest my precepts be displeasing
To those who think remonstrance teasing,
At once I'll tell thee our opinion
Concerning woman's soft dominion:
Howe'er we gaze with admiration
On eyes of blue or lips carnation,
Howe'er the flowing locks attract us,
Howe'er those beauties may distract us,
Stili fickle, we are prone to rove:
These cannot fix our souls to love :
It is not too severe a stricture
To say they form a pretty picture;
But wouldst thou see the secret chain
Which binds us in your humble train,
To hail you queens of all creation,
Know, in a word, 't is ANIMATION.

DAMÆTAS.

IN law an infant (1), and in years a boy,
In mind a slave to every vicious joy;
From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd;
in lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;
Versed in hypocrisy, while yet a child;
Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild;
Woman his dupe, his heedless friend a tool;

Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school;
Damætas ran through all the maze of sin,
And found the goal when others just begin:
Even still conflicting passions shake his soul,
And bid him drain the dregs of pleasure's bowl;
But, pall'd with vice, he breaks his former chain;
And what was once his bliss appears his bane. (2)

OSCAR OF ALVA. (3)

A TALE.

How sweetly shines, through azure skies, The lamp of heaven on Lora's shore, Where Alva's hoary turrets rise,

And hear the din of arms no more!

we were contemplating a painting on a large scale, in which, among other figures, is the uncovered whole-length of a warrior, a prudish-looking lady, who seemed to have touched the age of desperation, after having attentively surveyed it through her glass, observed to her party, that there was a great deal of indecorum in that picture. Madame S. shrewdly whispered in my ear, that the indecorum was in the remark.'"

(1) In law every person is an infant who has not attained the age of twenty-one.

(2) "When I went up to Trinity, in 1805, at the age of seventeen and a half, I was miserable and untoward to a degree. I was wretched at leaving Harrow-wretched at going to Cambridge instead of Oxford-wretched from some private domestic circumstances of different kinds; and, consequently, about as unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop." Diary.-Mr. Moore adds, "The

But often has yon rolling moon

On Alva's casques of silver play'd; And view'd, at midnight's silent noon,

Her chiefs in gleaming mail array'd:

And on the crimson'd rocks beneath, Which scowl o'er ocean's sullen flow, Pale in the scatter'd ranks of death,

She saw the gasping warrior low; While many an eye, which ne'er again

Could mark the rising orb of day, Turn'd feebly from the gory plain,

Beheld in death her fading ray.

Once to those eyes the lamp of Love,

They blest her dear propitious light;
But now she glimmer'd from above,
A sad, funereal torch of night.
Faded is Alva's noble race,

And grey her towers are seen afar;
No more her heroes urge the chase,
Or roll the crimson tide of war.

But, who was last of Alva's clan ?

Why grows the moss on Alva's stone? Her towers resound no steps of man, They echo to the gale alone.

And when that gale is fierce and high,
A sound is heard in yonder hall;
It rises hoarsely through the sky,

And vibrates o'er the mouldering wall. Yes, when the eddying tempest sighs,

It shakes the shield of Oscar brave; But there no more his banners rise, No more his plumes of sable wave. Fair shone the sun on Oscar's birth,

When Angus hail'd his eldest-born; The vassals round their chieftain's hearth Crowd to applaud the happy morn.

They feast upon the mountain deer,

The pibroch raised its piercing note; (4) To gladden more their Highland cheer, The strains in martial numbers float :

sort of life which young Byron led at this period, between the dissipations of London and of Cambridge, without a home to welcome, or even the roof of a single relative to receive him, was but little calculated to render him satisfied either with himself or the world. Unrestricted as he was by deference to any will but his own, even the pleasures to which he was naturally most inclined prematurely palled upon him, for want of those best zests of all enjoyment-rarity and restraint.”—E.

(3) The catastrophe of this tale was suggested by the story of "Jeronymo and Lorenzo," in the first volume of Schiller's Armenian, or the Ghost-Seer. It also bears some resemblance to a scene in the third act of Macbeth.

(4) Lord Byron falls into a very common error, that of mistaking pibroch, which means a particular sort of tune, for the instru ment on which it is played, the bagpipe Almost every foreign

And they who heard the war-notes wild
Hoped that one day the pibroch's strain
Should play before the hero's child,

While he should lead the tartan train.
Another year is quickly past,

And Angus hails another son ;
His natal day is like the last,

Nor soon the jocund feast was done.
Taught by their sire to bend the bow,
On Alva's dusky hills of wind,
The boys in childhood chased the roe,
And left their hounds in speed behind.
But ere their years of youth are o'er,
They mingle in the ranks of war;
They lightly wheel the bright claymore,
And send the whistling arrow far.
Dark was the flow of Oscar's hair,
Wildly it stream'd along the gale ;
But Allan's locks were bright and fair,
And pensive seem'd his cheek, and pale.
But Oscar own'd a hero's soul,

His dark eye shone through beams of truth; Allan had early learn'd control,

And smooth his words had been from youth.

Both, both were brave; the Saxon spear
Was shiver'd oft beneath their steel;
And Oscar's bosom scorn'd to fear,

But Oscar's bosom knew to feel;
While Allan's soul belied his form,
Unworthy with such charms to dwell :
Keen as the lightning of the storm,
On foes his deadly vengeance fell.
From high Southannon's distant tower
Arrived a young and noble dame;
With Kenneth's lands to form her dower,
Glenalvon's blue-eyed daughter came ;
And Oscar claim'd the beauteous bride,
And Angus on his Oscar smiled:
It soothed the father's feudal pride
Thus to obtain Glenalvon's child.
Hark to the pibroch's pleasing note!
Hark to the swelling nuptial song!
In joyous strains the voices float,

And still the choral peal prolong.
See how the heroes' blood-red plumes
Assembled wave in Alva's hall;
Each youth his varied plaid assumes,
Attending on their chieftain's call.

It is not war their aid demands,

The pibroch plays the song of peace;

tourist, Nodier, for example, does the same. The reader will find this little slip noticed in the article from the Edinburgh Review anexed.-E.

To Oscar's nuptials throng the bands,
Nor yet the sounds of pleasure cease.
But where is Oscar? sure 't is late:

Is this a bridegroom's ardent flame?
While thronging guests and ladies wait,
Nor Oscar nor his brother came.

At length young Allan join'd the bride:
"Why comes not Oscar?" Angus said :
"Is he not here?" the youth replied;
"With me he roved not o'er the glade :
"Perchance, forgetful of the day,

'Tis his to chase the bounding roe; Or ocean's waves prolong his stay;

Yet Oscar's bark is seldom slow." "Oh, no!" the anguish'd sire rejoin'd, "Nor chase, nor wave, my boy delay; Would he to Mora seem unkind?

Would aught to her impede his way? "Oh, search, ye chiefs! oh. search around! Allan, with these through Alva fly; Till Oscar, till my son is found,

Haste, haste, nor dare attempt reply."

All is confusion-through the vale
The name of Oscar hoarsely rings,
It rises on the murmuring gale,

Till night expands her dusky wings;

It breaks the stillness of the night,

But echoes through her shades in vain ;
It sounds through morning's misty light,
But Oscar comes not o'er the plain.
Three days, three sleepless nights, the Chief
For Oscar search'd each mountain cave.
Then hope is lost; in boundless grief,

His locks in grey torn ringlets wave.
"Oscar! my son!-thou God of heaven,
Restore the prop of sinking age!
Or, if that hope no more is given,

Yield his assassin to my rage.

"Yes, on some desert rocky shore

My Oscar's whiten'd bones must lie;
Then grant, thou God! I ask no more,

With him his frantic sire may die!
"Yet he may live,-away, despair!
Be calm, my soul! he yet may live ;
T'arraign my fate, my voice forbear!
Oh, God! my impious prayer forgive.
"What, if he live for me no more,
I sink forgotten in the dust,
The hope of Alva's age is o'er :

Alas! can pangs like these be just ?"
Thus did the hapless parent mourn,
Till Time, who soothes severest woe,
Had bade serenity return,

And made the tear-drop cease to flow.