Works

My friend spoke with insinuating tongue:
"Drink wine, and thy flesh shall be made whole. Look how
it hisses in the leathern bottle like a captured serpent."
Oh fool! can the sun be forged into a cask stopped with...

I know how well Love shoots, how swift his flight,
How now by force and now by stealth he steals,
How he will threaten now, anon will smite,
And how unstable are his chariot wheels....

Now since nor grief nor fear was longer there,
Each thought on her fair face was clear to see,
Composed into the calmness of despair -
Not like a flame extinguished violently,...

Unrisen splendour of the brightest sun,
To rise upon our darkness, if the star
Now beckoning thee out of thy misty throne
Could thaw the clouds which wage an obscure war
With thy young brightness!

Wake the serpent not - lest he
Should not know the way to go, -
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping
Through the deep grass of the meadow!
Not a bee shall hear him creeping,
Not a may-fly shall awaken...

Where's the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him.
'Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan
Or any other wonderous thing...

I am drunk with the honey wine
Of the moon-unfolded eglantine,
Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls.
The bats, the dormice, and the moles
Sleep in the walls or under the sward...

First published in Moore's 'Letters and Journals of Lord Byron', 1830, i. 56


1.

Hills of Annesley, Bleak and Barren,
Where my thoughtless Childhood stray'd,...

Ye gentle visitations of calm thought -
Moods like the memories of happier earth,
Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth,
Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought, -...

Come, thou awakener of the spirit's ocean,
Zephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave
No thought can trace! speed with thy gentle motion!

A great year and place;
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet.

I walk'd the shores of my Eastern Sea,
Heard over the waves the little voice,...

Thou hadst no home, and thou couldst see
In every street the windows' light:
Dragging thy limbs about all night,
No window kept a light for thee.

However much thou wert distressed,...

I could not run or play
In boyhood.
In manhood I could only sip the cup,
Not drink - For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.
Yet I lie here
Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:...

'Sankt Martin war ein frommer Mann
Trank gerne Cerevisiam,
Und hatt er kein Pecuniam
So liess er seinen Tunicam.'

(Comment by Herr Schwackenhammer.)
...

Old Horn to All Atlantic said:
(A-hay O! To me O!)
"Now where did Frankie learn his trade?
For he ran me down with a three-reef mains'I."
(All round the Horn!)

Atlantic answered: "Not from me!...

[Inscription under a Statue of the Virgin and Child, at Guernsey. - The poet sees in the emblem a modern Atlas, i.e., Freedom supporting the World.]

("Le peuple est petit.")

...

Our fathers toiled for bitter bread
While idlers thrived beside them;
But food to eat and clothes to wear
Their native land denied them.
They left their native land in spite
Of royalties' regalia,...

Australia's a big country
An' Freedom's humping bluey,
An' Freedom's on the wallaby
Oh! don't you hear 'er cooey?
She's just begun to boomerang,
She'll knock the tyrants silly,...

Frequently the woods are pink,
Frequently are brown;
Frequently the hills undress
Behind my native town.

Oft a head is crested
I was wont to see,
And as oft a cranny
Where it used to be....

A gentle was Fridolin,
And he his mistress dear,
Savern's fair Countess, honored in
All truth and godly fear.
She was so meek, and, ah! so good!
Yet each wish of her wayward mood,...