STANZAS TO A LADY, ON LEAVING ENGLAND.S 'Tis done—and shivering in the gale But could I be what I have been, 'Tis long since I beheld that eye As some lone bird, without a mate, I look around, and cannot trace And I will cross the whitening foam, I ne'er shall find a resting-place; My own dark thoughts I cannot shun, S [In the original MS., "To Mrs. Musters."] The poorest, veriest wretch on earth I go-but whereso'er I flee To think of every early scene, Of what we are, and what we've been, Would whelm some softer hearts with woe But mine, alas! has stood the blow; Yet still beats on as it begun, And never truly loves but one. And who that dear loved one may be, I've tried another's fetters too, "Twould soothe to take one lingering view, And bless thee in my last adieu; Yet wish I not those eyes to weep His home, his hope, his youth are gone, Now our boatmen quit their mooring, Stop the boat-I'm sick-oh Lord!" Ere you've been an hour on board." [Thus corrected by himself, in his mother's copy of Mr. Hobhouse's Miscellany; the two last lines being originally— "Though wheresoe'er my bark may run, I love but thee, I love but one."] Thus are screaming Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks; All are wrangling, Stuck together close as wax.— Such the general noise and racket, Ere we reach the Lisbon Packet. 66 Now we've reach'd her, lo! the captain, Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill.”- How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still: Then I'd scape the heat and racket Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet." Fletcher! Murray! Bob!' where are you? Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you! On Braganza Help!"-"A couplet ?"-"No, a cup "What's the matter?" "Zounds! my liver's coming up; [Lord Byron's three servants.] I shall not survive the racket Of this brutal Lisbon Packet." Now at length we're off for Turkey, Lord knows when we shall come back! May unship us in a crack. But, since life at most a jest is, As philosophers allow, Great and small things, Let's have laughing Who the devil cares for more? Some good wine! and who would lack it, Ev'n on board the Lisbon Packet? 2 Falmouth Roads, June 30, 1809. TO FLORENCE.3 OH Lady! when I left the shore, -“I 2 [In the letter in which these lively verses were enclosed, Lord Byron says:leave England without regret—I shall return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict sentenced to transportation; but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was as sour as a crab; and thus ends my first chapter."] 3 [These lines were written at Malta. The lady to whom they were addressed, and whom he afterwards apostrophises in the stanzas on the thunderstorm of Zitza, and in Childe Harold, is thus described in a letter to his mother :-"This letter is committed to the charge of a very extraordinary lady, whom you have doubtless heard of, Mrs. Spencer Smith, of whose escape the Marquis de Salvo published a narrative a few years ago. She has since been shipwrecked; and her life has been from its commencement so fertile in remarkable incidents, that in a romance they would appear improbable. She has born at Constantinople, where her father, Baron Herbert, was Austrian Ambassador; married unhappily, yet has never been impeached in point of character excited the vengeance of Bonaparte, by taking a part in some conspiracy; several times risked her life; and is not yet five and twenty. She is here on her way to |