Above his burnt-out brain, and sapless cinders. Their chances;-they're too numerous, like the thirty This is the literary lower empire, Where the prætorian bands take up the matter;A dreadful trade,' like his who 'gathers samphire,' The insolent soldiery to soothe and flatter, With the same feelings as you'd coax a vampire. Now, were I once at home, and in good satire, I'd try conclusions with those Janizaries, And show them what an intellectual war is. I think I know a trick or two, would turn My natural temper's really aught but stern, CARPE DIEM (CANTO XI, lxxxii-lxxxvi). TALK not of seventy years as age; in seven 0 80 I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to The humblest individual under heaven, Than might suffice a moderate century through. I have seen Napoleon, who seem'd quite a Jupiter, ΤΟ But it is time that I should hoist my 'blue Peter,' And sail for a new theme:-I have seen-and shook To see it-the king hiss'd, and then caress'd; I have seen the Landholders without a rap- I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen- I have seen small poets, and great prosers, and 20 I have seen the funds at war with house and land- By slaves on horseback—I have seen malt liquors Exchanged for 'thin potations' by John Bull I have seen John half detect himself a fool But carpe diem,' Juan, 'carpe, carpe!' To-morrow sees another race as gay -- And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. 'Life's a poor player,'-then play, 31 play out the Ye villains!' and above all keep a sharp eye Be hypocritical, be cautious, be Not what you seem, but always what you see. 40 A RUINED ABBEY (Canto XIII, lvi—lxiv). Ir stood embosom'd in a happy valley, Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood, like Caractacus, in act to rally His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke; The branching stag swept down with all his herd, Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed : Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade, ΙΟ 20 Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw. A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile (While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. These last had disappear'd-a loss to art: 30 The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil, Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle, Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone; But these had fallen, not when the friars fell, But in the war which struck Charles from his throne, When each house was a fortalice-as tell 40 But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd, This may be superstition, weak or wild; 50 A mighty window, hollow in the centre, The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire But in the noontide of the moon, and when Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again. ба Others, that some original shape, or form Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power (Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fix'd hour) To this grey ruin, with a voice to charm, Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower; The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such The fact I've heard it,—once perhaps too much. : 3 70 |