Scenes not unworthy Drury's days of old! Britons our judges, Nature for our guide, Still may we please - long, long may you preside 1

PARENTHETICAL ADDRESS

BY DR. PLAGIARY

[Among the rejected addresses was one by Dr. Busby which his son attempted to recite on the stage by force on October 14. He was taken into custody for his pains, but on the next night Dr. Busby obtained a hearing for his son. Byron in the satire below ridicules the ineffective delivery of the young man whose voice was quite inarticulate.' He introduces the verses with these words: Half stolen, with acknowledgments, to be spoken in an inarticulate voice by Master B. at the opening of the next new theatre. Stolen parts marked with the inverted commas of quotation thus

These, if we win the Graces, too, we gain Disgraces, too! inseparable train!' 'Three who have stolen their witching airs from Cupid'

(You all know what I mean, unless you're stupid):

'Harmonious throng' that I have kept in petto,

Now to produce in a 'divine sestetto!!' 'While Poesy,' with these delightful doxies, 'Sustains her part' in all the upper' boxes!

Thus lifted gloriously, you'll sweep along,' Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; 'Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play'

41

(For this last line George had a holiday). 'Old Drury never, never soar'd so high,' So says the manager, and so say I. 'But hold, you say, this self-complacent

VERSES FOUND IN A SUMMERHOUSE AT HALES-OWEN

WHEN Dryden's fool, 'unknowing what he sought,'

His hours in whistling spent, for want of thought,'

This guiltless oaf his vacancy of sense
Supplied, and amply too, by innocence;
Did modern swains, possess'd of Cymon's

powers,

In Cymon's manner waste their leisure hours, The offended guests would not, with blushing, see

These fair green walks disgraced by infamy. Severe the fate of modern fools, alas! When vice and folly mark them as they pass. Like noxious reptiles o'er the whiten'd wall, The filth they leave still points out where they crawl.

[First published, 1832.]

'REMEMBER THEE! REMEMBER!'

[Lady Caroline Lamb called one morning at her quondam lover's apartments. His lordship was from home; but finding Vathek on the table, the lady wrote in the first page of the volume the words, "Remember me!" Byron immediately wrote under the ominous warning these two stanzas.' - MEDWIN, Conversations of Lord Byron, 1824, pp. 329, 330.] REMEMBER thee! remember thee!

Till Lethe quench life's burning stream Remorse and Shame shall cling to thee, And haunt thee like a feverish dream! Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.

Thy husband too shall think of thee:
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!

TO TIME

TIME! on whose arbitrary wing

The varying hours must flag or fly, Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring, But drag or drive us on to die

Hail thou! who on my birth bestow'd Those boons to all that know thee known; Yet better I sustain thy load,

For now I bear the weight alone.

[LA REVANCHE]

[First published in the Edition of 1904 from a manuscript in the possession of Mr. Murray. It is dated by conjecture 1812.]

THERE is no more for me to hope,

There is no more for thee to fear;
And, if I give my Sorrow scope,
That Sorrow thou shalt never hear.
Why did I hold thy love so dear?
Why shed for such a heart one tear?
Let deep and dreary silence be
My only memory of thee!

When all are fled who flatter now,

Save thoughts which will not flatter then; And thou recall'st the broken vow

To him who must not love again— Each hour of now forgotten years Thou, then, shalt number with thy tears; And every drop of grief shall be A vain remembrancer of me!