These verses were given by Lord Byron to Mr. Power, of the Strand, who published them, with music by Sir John Stevenson. In a letter of March, 1816, Byron writes:

"Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year' ? I don't wish (like Mr. Fitzgerald) to claim the character of 'Vates,' in all its translations, but were they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning, 'There's not a joy the world can give,' etc., on which I pique myself as being the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote." The occasion of the verses was the death of a friend of the poet's.

I.

THERE's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,

When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;

'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,

But the tender bloom of heart is gone ere youth itself be past.

5 Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness

Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of ex

cess:

The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain

The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never stretch again.

Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down ;

10 It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its

own;

That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our

tears,

And though the eye may sparkle still, 't is where the ice appears.

Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,

Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest;

15 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret

wreath,

All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath.

Oh could I feel as I have felt,

been,

or be what I have

Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanish'd scene;

As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,

20 So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.

II.

THERE be none of Beauty's daughters

With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:

s When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming.

And the midnight moon is weaving
10 Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant's asleep :
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;

15 With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

III.

BRIGHT be the place of thy soul!
No lovelier spirit than thine
E'er burst from its mortal control,

In the orbs of the blessed to shine.
5 On earth thou wert all but divine,
As thy soul shall immortally be ;
And our sorrow may cease to repine
When we know that thy God is with thee.

10

Light be the turf of thy tomb!

May its verdure like emeralds be! There should not be the shadow of gloom, In aught that reminds us of thee. Young flowers and an evergreen tree

May spring from the spot of thy rest: 15 But nor cypress nor yew let us see; For why should we mourn for the blest?

IV.

THEY say that Hope is happiness;

But genuine Love must prize the past, And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose the first- they set the last;

5 And all that Memory loves the most
Was once our only Hope to be,
And all that Hope adored and lost
Hath melted into Memory.

10

Alas! it is delusion all:

The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall,

Nor dare we think on what we are.

THE DREAM.

This poem, called in the first draught "The Destiny," was written at Diodati, in July, 1816, and was occasioned by the separation which had come about between the poet and Lady Byron. His reflection on his misery led him to recall an earlier passion for a lady whose own marriage had also proved unhappy.

I.

OUR life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,

5 And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become

10 A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;

They pass like spirits of the past, they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power

The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;

15 They make us what we were not what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanish'd shadows-Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? What are they?
Creations of the mind? - The mind can make
20 Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dream'd
Perchance in sleep for in itself a thought,
25 A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.