Or if too classic for his vulgar brain, He fear'd his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon? "Pedlars," and "Boats," and "Waggons!" Oh! ye shades Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this? Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss POETICAL COMMANDMENTS. (DON JUAN, Canto i. Stanzas 204-206.) IF ever I should condescend to prose, Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope; Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; Because the first is crazed beyond all hope, The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy: With Crabbe it may be difficult to cope, And Campbell's Hipprocrene is somewhat drouthy: Thou shalt not steal from Samuel Rogers, nor Commit flirtation with the muse of Moore. Thou shalt not covet Mr. Sotheby's Muse, His Pegasus, nor any thing that 's his; Exactly as you please, or not—the rod; BYRON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. (DON JUAN, Canto xi. Stanzas 53-60.) JUAN knew several languages He might as well and brought them up with skill, in time To save his fame with each accomplish'd belle, His qualities (with them) into sublime: However, he did pretty well, and was The coteries, and, as in Banquo's glass, He saw ten thousand living authors pass, In twice five years the "greatest living poet," Even I albeit I 'm sure I did not know it, The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme. But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain: "La Belle Alliance" of dunces down at zero, Now that the Lion 's fall'n, may rise again: But I will fall at least as fell my hero; Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign; Or to some lonely isle of gaolers go, With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe. Sir Walter reign'd before me; Moore and Campbell Before and after; but now grown more holy, The Muses upon Sion's hill must ramble With poets almost clergymen, or wholly; And Pegasus hath a psalmodic amble Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley, Then there's my gentle Euphues; who, they say, To turn out both, or either, it may be. John Keats, who was kill'd off by one critique, Contrived to talk about the gods of late 'T is strange the mind, that very fiery particle, The list grows long of live and dead pretenders His last award, will have the long grass grow Their chances; they 're too numerous, like the thirty Mock tyrants, when Rome's annals wax'd but dirty. POETICAL PRODUCTION. (DON JUAN, Canto xiv. Stanzas 10, 11.) I HAVE brought this world about my ears, and eke But " why then publish?"-There are no rewards Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary. It occupies me to turn back regards On what I 've seen or ponder'd, sad or cheery; And what I write I cast upon the stream, To swim or sink I have had at least my dream. THE LIGHTER SIDE. (DON JUAN, Canto iv. Stanzas 3, 4.) As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow, And wish'd that others held the same opinion; They took it up when my days grew more mellow, And other minds acknowledged my dominion: |