60

My only claim is this,

With labor stiff and stark,

By lawful turn, my living to earn,
Between the light and dark;
My daily bread, and nightly bed,
My bacon, and drop of beer-

Welcome, life! the Spirit strives! 10 Strength returns, and hope revives; Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn Fly like shadows at the morn,Oer the earth there comes a bloomSunny light for sullen gloom,

10

And minstrels pledge the rosy wine To lutes like this, and lips like thine! Oh fly with me! my courser's flight Is like the rushing breeze, [night!"' And the kind moon has said "Good And sunk behind the trees: The lover's voice-the loved one's earThere's nothing else to speak or hear; 15 And we will say, as on we glide, That nothing lives on earth beside!

20

Oh fly with me! and we will wing
Our white skiff o'er the waves,
And hear the Tritons revelling

Among their coral caves;

The envious mermaid, when we pass,
Shall cease her song, and drop her glass;
For it will break her very heart,
To see how fair and dear thou art.

25 Oh fly with me! and we will dwell
Far over the green seas,
Where sadness rings no parting knell
For moments such as these!
Where Italy's unclouded skies
30 Look brightly down on brighter eyes,
Or where the wave-wed City1 smiles;
Enthroned upon her hundred isles.

Oh fly with me! by these sweet strings
Swept o'er by Passion's fingers,
35 By all the rocks, and vales, and springs
Where Memory lives and lingers,
By all the tongue can never tell,
By all the heart has told so well,
By all that has been or may be,

40 And by Love's self-Oh fly with me!

Leaving all her banquet cold, and her goblet dry.

Power had won a throne of glory: where is now his fame?

10 Genius said, "I live in story:" who hath heard his name?

Love beneath a myrtle1 bough whispered "Why so fast?”

And the roses on his brow withered as I past.

I have heard the heifer lowing o'er the wild wave's bed;

I have seen the billow flowing where the cattle fed;

15 Where began my wandering? Memory will not say!

10

Where will rest my weary wings? Science turns away!

From LETTERS FROM TEIGNMOUTH 1829

I-OUR BALL

Comment! c'est lui? que je le regarde encore! C'est que vraiment il est bien changé; n'est-ce pas, mon papa ?-Les Premier Amours.

You'll come to our ball;-since we parted

I've thought of you more than I'll say; Indeed, I was half broken-hearted

For a week, when they took you away. Fond fancy brought back to my slumbers Our walks on the Ness and the Den, And echoed the musical numbers

Which you used to sing to me then. I know the romance, since it's over, "Twere idle, or worse, to recall ;

I know you're a terrible rover;

But, Clarence, you'll come to our Ball!

But out on the world!-from the flowers It shuts out the sunshine of truth; It blights the green leaves in the bowers, It makes an old age of our youth: 65 And the flow of our feeling, once in it, Like a streamlet beginning to freeze, Though it cannot turn ice in a minute, Grows harder by sudden degrees. Time treads o'er the graves of affection; Sweet honey is turned into gall; Perhaps you have no recollection

70

That ever you danced at our Ball.

1 A school established by a national society for educating the poor.

A large evening party or other fashionable gathering.

3 Hochheimer, a kind of wine.

A fictitious name signed to public notices by one of the Irish rebels of 1822.

10

And you'll come, WON'T you come? to our Ball?

From EVERY-DAY CHARACTERS

1829-30

THE BELLE OF THE BALL-ROOM

Il faut juger des femmes depuis la chaussure jusqu'à la coiffure exclusivement, à peu près comme on_mesure le poisson entre queue et tête.2-LA BRUYÈRE.

Years-years ago,-ere yet my dreams
Had been of being wise or witty,—
Ere I had done with writing themes,
Or yawned o'er this infernal Chitty;-

5 Years-years ago,-while all my joy
Was in my fowling-piece and filly,-
In short, while I was yet a boy,

I fell in love with Laura Lily.

I saw her at the County Ball:
There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle
Gave signal sweet in that old hall

Of hands across and down the middle, Hers was the subtlest spell by far

Of all that set young hearts romancing; 15 She was our queen, our rose, our star; And then she danced-O Heaven, her dancing!

1 A "blue stocking," a woman affecting an interest in literature and politics. See Byron's Dor, Juan, I, 206, 3, and n. 1 (p. 585).

"One ought to judge women exclusive of their foot-wear and their head-wear, approximately as one measures fish between tail and head.

She talked,-of politics or prayers,

Of Southey's prose or Wordsworth's
sonnets,-

Of danglers-or of dancing bears,
Of battles-or the last new bonnets,
By candlelight, at twelve o'clock,

To me it mattered not a tittle;
If those bright lips had quoted Locke,
I might have thought they murmured
Little.

Through sunny May, through sultry June,
I loved her with a love eternal;

35 I spoke her praises to the moon,

40

45

50

I wrote them to The Sunday Journal:
My mother laughed; I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling:
My father frowned; but how should gout
See any happiness in kneeling?
She was the daughter of a Dean,

Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
She had one brother, just thirteen,
Whose color was extremely hectic;
Her grandmother for many a year
Had fed the parish with her bounty;
Her second cousin was a peer,

And Lord Lieutenant of the County.
But titles, and the three per cents,2
And mortgages, and great relations,
And India bonds, and tithes and rents,
Oh, what are they to love's sensations?
Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks-
Such wealth, such honors, Cupid chooses;
55 He cares as little for the Stocks,

As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.

She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach,
Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading:
She botanized; I envied each

60 Young blossom in her boudoir fading:
She warbled Handel; it was grand;

She made the Catalani jealous:
She touched the organ; I could stand

For hours and hours to blow the bellows.

1 Sparrows were sacred to Venus. Government bonds yielding three per cent interest.

A tithe is a tenth part of the yearly income paid for the support of the clergy and the church.