Selected Poems (157 page)

Cornelian, The,
2

Corsair, The,
248

Darkness,
412

Destruction of Sennacherib, The,
355

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
,
6

Epistle from Mr Murray to Dr Polidori,
570

Epistle to Augusta,
456

Epistle to Mr Murray,
599

Fare thee well!
392

Fragment, A,
1

Francesca of Rimini,
632

From the French,
357

Giaour, The
,
167

Isles of Greece, The,
629

Lara
,
316

Lines (On Hearing that Lady Byron was Ill),
460

Lines to a Lady Weeping,
154

Lines to Mr Hodgson,
49

Maid of Athens, ere we part,
51

Manfred
,
463

Mazeppa
,
602

Napoleon’s Farewell,
356

Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte,
308

Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill, An,
153

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year,
780

Prisoner of Chillon, The
,
397

Prometheus,
394

Remember Thee! Remember Thee!
166

Sardanapalus,
635

She walks in beauty,
315

Siege of Corinth, The,
359

So, we’ll go no more a roving,
507

Sonnet on Chillon,
397

Stanzas (When a man hath no freedom),
634

Stanzas for Music,
314

Stanzas to the Po,
627

To Caroline,
3

To Ianthe,
59

To Thvrza,
54

To Woman,
1

Vision of Judgment, The
,
749

Waltz, The,
155

When we two parted,
391

Who kill’d John Keats?
735

Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos,
53

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

And thou wert sad — yet I was not with thee,
460

Come, blue-eyed maid of heaven! – but thou, alas!
94

Dear Doctor, I have read your play,
570

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
397

Fare thee well! and if for ever,
392

Farewell to the Land, where the gloom of my Glory,
356

He hath wrong’d his queen, but still he is her lord,
636

Huzza! Hodgson, we are going,
49

I had a dream, which was not all a dream,
412

I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name,
314

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
512

If, in the month of dark December,
53

In Coron’s bay floats many a galley light,
268

In the year since Jesus died for men,
360

Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!
415

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle,
209

Maid of Athens, ere we part,
51

Muse of the many-twinkling feet! whose charms,
157

Must thou go, my glorious Chief,
357

My dear Mr Murray,
599

My hair is grey, but not with years,
400

My sister! my sweet sister! if a name,
456

Night wanes – the vapours round the mountains curl’d,
335

No breath of air to break the wave,
168

No specious splendour of this stone,
2

Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
59

‘O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
250

Oh well done Lord E[ldo]n! and better Lord R[yde]r!
153

Oh, thou! in Hellas deem’d of heavenly birth,
61

Remember thee! remember thee!
166

River, that rollest by the ancient walls,
627

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate,
753

She walks in beauty, like the night,
314

Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
285

So, we’ll go no more a roving,
507

Still must I hear? – shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl,
8

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
355

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
629

The lamp must be replenish’d, but even then,
463

‘The land where I was born sits by the seas,
632

The Serfs are glad through Lara’s wide domain,
316

The winds are high on Helle’s wave,
225

’Tis done — but yesterday a King!
308

’Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout,
573

’Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
780

Titan! to whose immortal eyes,
394

’Twas after dread Pultowa’s day,
603

Weep, daughter of a royal line,
154

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
634

When we two parted,
391

When, to their airy hall, my fathers’ voice,
1

‘Who kill’d John Keats?’
735

Without a stone to mark the spot,
54

Woman! experience might have told me,
1

You say you love, and yet your eye,
3

You’re too late/Is it over?/Nor will be this hour,
736

1.
[‘He is, and gone again.’ – B. 1816.]

1.
John Cam Hobhouse. [Editors]

1.
IMIT. – ‘Semper ego auditor tantum? nunquamne reponam, Vexatus toties rauci Theeside Codri?’ –
Juv
. Sat. I.

2.
[‘
Hoarse Fitzgerald.
’ – ‘Right enough; but why notice such a mountebank.’ – B. 1816.]

3.
Mr Fitzgerald, facetiously termed by Cobbett the ‘Small Beer Poet,’ inflicts his annual tribute of verse on the Literary Fund: not content with writing, he spouts in person, after the company have imbibed a reasonable quantity of bad port, to enable them to sustain the operation.

4.
[‘This must have been written in the spirit of prophecy.’ – B. 1816.]

1
. This ingenuous youth is mentioned more particularly, with his production, in another place.

2.
In the Edinburgh Review. – [‘He’s a very good fellow: and, except his mother and sister, the best of the set, to my mind.’ – B. 1816.]

1
. Messrs. Jeffrey and Lambe are the alpha and omega, the first and last of the Edinburgh Review; the others are mentioned hereafter.

2.
IMIT. ‘Stulta est Clementia, cum tot ubique — occurras perituræ parcere chartsæ’ –
Juv
. Sat. I.

1
. IMIT. ‘Cur tamen hoc libeat potius decurrere campoPer quem magnus equos Auruncæ flexit alumnus:Si vacat, et placidi rationem admittitis, edam.’ –
Juv
. Sat. I.

1
. Stott, better known in the ‘Morning Post’ by the name of Hafiz. This personage is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos. I remember, when the reigning family left Portugal, a special Ode of Master Stott’s, beginning thus: – (
Stott loquitur quoad Hibernia.
) –‘Princely offspring of Braganza,Erin greets thee with a stanza,’ & c.Also a Sonnet to Rats, well worthy of the subject, and a most thundering Ode, commencing as follows:-‘Oh! for a Lay! loud as the surgeThat lashes Lapland’s sounding shore.’Lord have mercy on us! the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ was nothing to this.

1.
See the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’
passim
. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning, prologuising to Bayes’ tragedy unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, ‘a stark moss-trooper,’ videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady’s injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his own elegant phrase, ‘’twas his neck-verse at Harribee,’ i.e. the gallows. – The biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice as fast as his master’s horse, without the aid of seven-leagued boots, are
chefs-d’œuvre
in the improvement of taste. For incident we have the invisible, but by no means sparing box on the ear bestowed on the page, and the entrance of a knight and charger into the castle, under the very natural disguise of a wain of hay. Marmion, the hero of the latter romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been, had he been able to read and write. The poem was manufactured for Messrs Constable, Murray, and Miller, worshipful booksellers, in consideration of the receipt of a sum of money; and truly, considering the inspiration, it is a very creditable production. If Mr Scott will write for hire, let him do his best for his paymasters, but not disgrace his genius, which is undoubtedly great, by a repetition of black-letter ballad imitations.

1.
‘Good night to Marmion’ – the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion.

2.
As the Odyssey is so closely connected with the story of the Iliad, they may almost be classed as one grand historical poem. In alluding to Milton and Tasso, we consider the ‘Paradise Lost,’ and ‘Gierusalemme Liberata,’ as their standard efforts; since neither the ‘Jerusalem Conquered’ of the Italian, nor the ‘Paradise Regained’ of the English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former poems. Query: Which of Mr Southey’s will survive?

1.
‘Thalaba,’ Mr Southey’s second poem, is written in open defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr S. wished to produce something novel, and succeeded to a miracle. ‘Joan of Arc,’ was marvellous enough, but ‘Thalaba,’ ‘was one of those poems ‘which,’ in the words of Porson, ‘will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but –
not till then
.’

2.
We beg Mr Southey’s pardon: ‘Madoc disdains the degrading title of epic.’ See his preface. Why is epic degraded? and by whom? Certainly the late romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye, Ogilvy, Hole, and gentle Mistress Cowley, have not exalted the epic muse; but, as Mr Southey’s poem ‘disdains the appellation,’ allow us to ask – has he substituted any thing better in its stead? or must he be content to rival Sir Richard Blackmore in the quantity as well as quality of his verse?

1.
See ‘The Old Woman of Berkley,’ a ballad, by Mr Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a ‘high-trotting horse.’

2
. The last line, ‘God help thee,’ is an evident plagiarism from the Antijacobin to Mr Southey, on his Dactylics.

3
. [‘
Unjust
.’ – B. 1816.]

4
. Lyrical Ballads, p. 4. – ‘The Tables Turned.’ Stanza 1.

1
. Mr W. in his preface labours hard to prove, that prose and verse are much the same; and certainly his precepts and practice are strictly conformable: –

‘And thus to Betty’s questions he

Made answer, like a traveller bold.

The cock did crow, to-whoo, to-whoo,