Oh, holy Abraham! dost thou see the sight?
Thy followers mingling with these royal swine,
Who spit not "on their Jewish gaberdine,"
But honour them as portion of the show-
(Where now, oh Pope! is thy forsaken toe?
Could it not favour Judah with some kicks?
Or has it ceased to "kick against the pricks?")
On Shylock's shore behold them stand afresh,
To cut from nation's hearts their "pound of flesh."

XVI.

Strange sight this Congress! destined to unite
All that's incongruous, all that's opposite.
I speak not of the Sovereigns-they're alike,
A common coin as ever mint could strike;
But those who sway the puppets, pull the strings,
Have more of motley than their heavy kings.
Jews, authors, generals, charlatans, combine,
While Europe wonders at the vast design:
There Metternich, power's foremost parasite,
Cajoles; there Wellington forgets to fight;
There Chateaubriand forms new books of martyrs ;"
And subtle Greeks' intrigue for stupid Tartars;
There Montmorenci, the sworn foe to charters,
Turns a diplomatist of great éclat,

To furnish articles for the "Débats ;"
Of war so certain-yet not quite so sure
As his dismissal in the "Moniteur."
Alas! how could his cabinet thus err !
Can peace be worth an ultra-minister?
He falls indeed, perhaps to rise again,
"Almost as quickly as he conquer'd Spain."

8

• Monsieur Chateaubriand, who has not forgotten the author in the minister, received a handsome compliment at Verona from a literary sovereign: "Ah! Monsieur C., are you related to that Chateaubriand who-who-who has written something?" (écrit quelque chose!) It is said that the author of Atala repented him for a moment of his legitimacy.

7 [Count Capo d'Istrias-afterwards President of Greece. The count was murdered, in September, 1831, by the brother and son of a Mainote chief whom he had imprisoned.]

8 [The Duke de Montmorenci-Laval.]

9 [From Pope's verses on Lord Peterborough.]

XVII.

Enough of this-a sight more mournful woos
The averted eye of the reluctant muse.
The imperial daughter, the imperial bride,
The imperial victim-sacrifice to pride;
The mother of the hero's hope, the boy,
The young Astyanax of Modern Troy ;'
The still pale shadow of the loftiest queen
That earth has yet to see, or e'er hath seen;
She flits amidst the phantoms of the hour,
The theme of pity, and the wreck of power.
Oh, cruel mockery! Could not Austria spare
A daughter? What did France's widow there?
Her fitter place was by St. Helen's wave,
Her only throne is in Napoleon's grave.
But, no, she still must hold a petty reign,
Flank'd by her formidable chamberlain;
The martial Argus, whose not hundred eyes

Must watch her through these paltry pageantries.2
What though she share no more, and shared in vain,
A sway surpassing that of Charlemagne,

Which swept from Moscow to the southern seas!
Yet still she rules the pastoral realm of cheese,
Where Parma views the traveller resort,
To note the trappings of her mimic court.
But she appears! Verona sees her shorn
Of all her beams-while nations gaze
and mourn
Ere yet her husband's ashes have had time
To chill in their inhospitable clime;
(If e'er those awful ashes can grow cold;-
But no,-their embers soon will burst the mould;)
She comes!-the Andromache (but not Racine's,
Nor Homer's,)-Lo! on Pyrrhus' arm she leans!
Yes! the right arm, yet red from Waterloo,
Which cut her lord's half-shatter'd sceptre through,
Is offer'd and accepted? Could a slave

Do more or less?-and he in his new grave!

1 [Napoleon François Charles Joseph, Duke of Reichstadt, died at the palace of Schönbrunn, July 22, 1832, having just attained his twenty-first year.]

eye.

2 [Count Neipperg, chamberlain and second husband to Maria-Louisa, had but one The count died in 1831.]

Her eye, her cheek, betray no inward strife,
And the ex-empress grows as ex a wife!

So much for human ties in royal breasts!

Why spare men's feelings, when their own are jests?

XVIII.

But, tired of foreign follies, I turn home,

And sketch the group-the picture's yet to come.
My muse 'gan weep, but, ere a tear was spilt,
She caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt!3
While throng'd the chiefs of every Highland clan
-To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman!
Guildhall grows Gael, and echoes with Erse roar,
While all the Common Council cry "Claymore!"
To see proud Albyn's tartans as a belt
Gird the gross sirloin of a city Celt,
She burst into a laughter so extreme,
That I awoke-and lo! it was no dream!

Here, reader, will we pause:-if there's no harm in
This first—you'll have, perhaps, a second "Carmen."

3 [George the Fourth is said to have been annoyed on entering the levee room at Holyrood (Aug. 1822), in full Stuart tartan, to see only one figure similarly attired (and of similar bulk)-that of Sir William Curtis. The city knight had everything complete-even the knife stuck in the garter. He asked the King, if he did not think him well dressed. "Yes!" replied his Majesty, "only you have no spoon in your hose." The devourer of turtle had a fine engraving executed of himself in his Celtic attire.]

OCCASIONAL PIECES.

1807-1824.

INTRODUCTION TO OCCASIONAL PIECES.

THE "Hours of Idleness" contain the whole of the poems comprised in the different editions the author prepared of that work, together with several pieces which were written at the same period, and remained in MS. till after his death. All his subsequent miscellaneous productions, which extend beyond a page or two, are arranged in the order of their composition, and there now remain over a number of minor poems, which we have grouped together under the title of "Occasional Pieces." They embrace specimens of almost every date, commencing from the publication of "Hours of Idleness," and concluding with the latest verses which came from his pen-of almost every variety of style, from the terrible gloom of the poem on "Darkness,"-down to his gayest effusions,—and of almost every grade of quality, from the inspirations of genius to the designed doggerel interspersed among his letters. Of these numerous poems "Darkness" is the grandest and the most original. Campbell's "Last Man " is sublime from his lofty faith in the midst of ruin,—proudly defying a perishing world to shake his trust in God. Lord Byron, after the manner of his genius, can discover in the situation only horror and despair, but he paints his picture with such power that we are transferred for the moment from the world about us to the world he has conjured up. There are several pungent pieces in the collection, which must not be literally understood. Satirists rarely feel half the indignation they express, and Lord Byron was especially prone to dip his pen in gall when he had little bitterness in his heart. His "Windsor Poetics" and "Irish Avatar" are signal examples of this dissembled invective. He meant, no doubt, to irritate George IV. and his minister, but the real animosity was very slight. Those who shoot arrows in sport are apt to forget that the wound is proportioned to the strength with which the bow is drawn, and is none the less because the malice of the marksman was rather playful than deadly. In the tender portion of the occasional strains there is an unmistakeable sincerity of sorrow. A poet's grief finds a voice in verse, and Lord Byron seldom spoke with deeper and simpler pathos than in the address to Mrs. Musters, "Well! thou art happy;" in some of the stanzas to Thyrza; in the Lines "There's not a joy the world can give,” and in the dying dirge which he composed upon his birth-day. Each poem expresses a different phase of that distress which darkened a life full of triumphs and full of anguish,—the pangs produced by unsuccessful love, by the early death of some fair friend whose name is unknown, by the sense that his heart was withering at the core, and by the regrets for past unworthy deeds, with a speedy grave his brightest hope for the future. It is impossible to read these melancholy musings without something of wonder mingling with our pity, that a being who could feel so justly and strongly should have sought relief from the sorrows of his better nature in the delirious dictates of the worser part.