Hadst nought to dread-in thy own weakness

shielded,

And in my love, which hath but too much yielded, And spared, for thy sake, some I should not

spare;

And thus upon the world -trust in thy truth, And the wild fame of my ungovern'd youthOn things that were not, and on things that

are

Even upon such a basis hast thou built
A monument, whose cement hath been guilt!
The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,

And hew'd down, with an unsuspected sword,
Fame, peace, and hope-and all the better life
Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
Might still have risen from out the grave of strife,
And found a nobler duty than to part.
But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
For present anger, and for future gold-
And buying other's grief at any price.
And thus once enter'd into crooked ways,
The early truth, which was thy proper praise,
Did not still walk beside thee-but at times,
And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
Deceit, averments incompatible,

Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell
In Janus-spirits--the significant eye

Which learns to lie with silence-the pretext
Of prudence, with advantages annex'd-
The acquiescence in all things which tend,
No matter how, to the desired end-
All found a place in thy philosophy.

The means were worthy, and the end is won-
I would not do by thee as thou hast done!
September 1816.

Notes to Domestic Pieces.

1.

["I send you my last night's dream, and request to have fifty copies struck off, for private distribution. I wish Mr Gifford to look at them. They are from life." -Lord B. to Mr Murray, March 30, 1816.]

2.

[These beautiful verses, so expressive of the writer's wounded feelings at the moment, were written in July, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva. "Be careful, he says, "in printing the stanzas beginning, Though the day of my destiny's,' &c., which I think well of as a composition."]

3.

[These stanzas-" than which," says the Quarterly Review, for January 1831, "there is nothing perhaps more mournfully and desolately beautiful in the whole range of Lord Byron's poetry," were also written at Diodati, and sent home to be published if Mrs Leigh should consent. She decided the other way, and the epistle was not printed till 1830.]

4.

[Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of "Foul-weather Jack."]

MONODY ON THE DEATH

OF

THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN.

MONODY ON THE DEATH

OF

THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN,

SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

·:0:

WHEN the last sunshine of expiring day
In summer's twilight weeps itself away,
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower?
With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes
While Nature makes that melancholy pause,
Her breathing moment on the bridge where Time
Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime,
Who hath not shared that calm, so still and deep,
The voiceless thought which would not speak
but weep,

A holy concord, and a bright regret,

A glorious sympathy with suns that set?
'Tis not harsh sorrow, but a tenderer woe,
Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below,
Felt without bitterness, but full and clear,
A sweet dejection, a transparent tear,
Unmix'd with worldly grief or selfish stain,
Shed without shame, and secret without pain.

Even as the tenderness that hour instils
When Summer's day declines along the hills,
So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes
When all of Genius which can perish dies.
A mighty Spirit is eclipsed- a Power
Hath pass'd from day to darkness--to whose hour