Oh! early in the balance weigh'd,
And ever light of word and worth,
Whose soul expired ere youth decay'd,
And left thee but a mass of earth.
To see thee moves the scorner's mirth:
But tears in Hope's averted eye
Lament that even thou hadst birth.
Unfit to govern, live, or die.

ELEGIAC STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF SIR PETER PARKER, BART. (1)

THERE is a tear for all that die,

A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And Triumph weeps above the brave.

For them is Sorrow's purest sigh
O'er Ocean's heaving bosom sent:
In vain their bones unburied lie,

All earth becomes their monument!

(1) This gallant officer fell in August, 1814, in his twenty-ninth year, whilst commanding, on shore, a party belonging to his ship, the Menelaus, and animating them, in storming the American camp near Baltimore. He was Lord Byron's first cousin ; but they had never met since boyhood. -E]

A tomb is theirs on every page,
An epitaph on every tongue:
The present hours, the future age,
For them bewail, to them belong.

For them the voice of festal mirth
Grows hush'd, their name the only sound;
While deep Remembrance pours to Worth
The goblet's tributary round.

A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,

Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?

And, gallant Parker! thus enshrined
Thy life, thy fall, thy fame shall be;
And early valour, glowing, find

A model in thy memory.

But there are breasts that bleed with thee In woe, that glory cannot quell;

And shuddering hear of victory,

Where one so dear, so dauntless, fell.

Where shall they turn to mourn thee less? When cease to hear thy cherish'd name? Time cannot teach forgetfulness,

While Grief's full heart is fed by Fame.

Alas! for them, though not for thee,
They cannot choose but weep the more;
Deep for the dead the grief must be,
Who ne'er gave cause to mourn before.

October, 1814.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC. (1)

["THERE'S NOT A JOY THE WORLD CAN GIVE," &c.]

"O Lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo: quater

Felix! in imo qui scatentem

Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit.'

GRAY's Poemata.

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.

(1) These verses were given by Lord Byron to Mr. Power, of the Strand, who has published them, with very beautiful music by Sir John Stevenson. ["I feel merry enough to send you a sad song. An event, the death of poor Dorset, (see antè, Vol. VII. p. 43.) and the recollection of what I once felt, and ought to have felt now, but could not set me pondering, and finally into the train of thought which you have in your hands. I wrote them with a view to your setting them, and as a present to Power, if he would accept the words, and you did not think yourself degraded, for once in a way, by marrying them to music. I don't care what Power says to secure the property of the song, so that it is not complimentary to me, nor any thing about condescending' or 'noble author'-both vile phrases,' as Polonius says.". Lord B. to Mr. Moore.]

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;

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, 'tis 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;

'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,

or be what I have

been,

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,

So, midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me. (1)

March, 1815.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

["THERE BE NONE OF BEAUTY'S DAUGHTERS."]

There be none of Beauty's daughters

With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:
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
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;

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

(1) ["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 transla tions, but were they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning, 'There's not a joy the world can give,' &c., on which I pique myself as being the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote."- B. Letters, March, 1816.]