For the Journal you hint of,

As ready to print off,

No doubt you do right to commend it; But as yet I have writ off

The devil a bit of

Our "Beppo : "—when copied, I'll send it.

Then you've * * * *'s Tour,

No great things, to be sure,

You could hardly begin with a less work ;

For the pompous rascallion,

Who don't speak Italian

Nor French, must have scribbled by guesswork.

You can make any loss up

With "Spence" and his gossip,

A work which must surely succeed;

Then Queen Mary's Epistle-craft,

With the new "Fytte" of "Whistlecraft,"
Must make people purchase and read.

[The fourth Canto of "Childe Harold."]

Then you've General Gordon,

Who girded his sword on,

To serve with a Muscovite master,

And help him to polish

A nation so owlish,

They thought shaving their beards a disaster.

For the man, "poor and shrewd,"

With whom you'd conclude

A compact without more delay, Perhaps some such pen is

Still extant in Venice;

But please, sir, to mention your pay.

Venice, January 8, 1818.

TO MR. MURRAY.

STRAHAN, Tonson, Lintot of the times,
Patron and publisher of rhymes,
For thee the bard up Pindus climbs,
My Murray.

To thee, with hope and terror dumb,
The unfledged MS. authors come;
Thou printest all—and sellest some—
My Murray.

Upon thy table's baize so green
The last new Quarterly is seen,-
But where is thy new Magazine,
My Murray?

Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine
The works thou deemest most divine—
The "Art of Cookery," and mine,

My Murray.

5 Vide your letter.

Tours, Travels, Essays, too, I wist,
And Sermons, to thy mill bring grist;
And then thou hast the "Navy List,"
My Murray.

And Heaven forbid I should conclude,
Without "the Board of Longitude,"
Although this narrow paper would,

My Murray.

Venice, March 25, 1818.

ON THE BIRTH OF JOHN WILLIAM RIZZO HOPPNER.

His father's sense, his mother's grace,
In him, I hope, will always fit so;
With still to keep him in good case-
The health and appetite of Rizzo.

February, 1818.

STANZAS TO THE PO.”

RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls,"
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;

6 [These lines, which were written by Lord Byron on the birth of the son of the British vice-consul at Venice, are no otherwise remarkable, than that they were thought worthy of being metrically translated into ten languages: namely, Greek, Latin, Italian (also in the Venetian dialect), German, French, Spanish, Illyrian, Hebrew, Armenian, and Samaritan. The original lines, with the different versions, were printed, in a small neat volume, in the seminary of Padua.]

[About the middle of April, 1819, Lord Byron travelled from Venice to Ravenna, at which last city he expected to find the Countess Guiccioli. The above stanzas, which have been as much admired as anything of the kind he ever wrote, were composed during the journey, while he was sailing on the Po. In transmitting them to England, in May, 1820, he says, "They must not be published: pray recollect this, as they are mere verses of society, and written upon private feelings and passions." They were first printed in 1824.]

8 [Ravenna-a city to which Lord Byron afterwards declared himself more attached than to any other place, except Greece.]

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

What do I say a mirror of my heart?

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?
Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;
And such as thou art were my passions long.1

Time may

have somewhat tamed them,-not for ever; Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away:

But left long wrecks behind, and now again,
Borne in our old unchanged career, we move:
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I to loving one I should not love.

The current I behold will sweep beneath.

Her native walls, and murmur at her feet;
Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe
The twilight air, unharm'd by summer's heat.

She will look on thee,-I have look'd on thee,
Full of that thought: and, from that moment, ne'er
Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see,
Without the inseparable sigh for her!

Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,-
Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now:

Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,

That happy wave repass me in its flow!

The wave that bears my tears returns no more:
Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep ?-
Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,
I by thy source, she by the dark-blue deep.

But that which keepeth us apart is not

Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth,
But the distraction of a various lot,

As various as the climates of our birth.

A stranger loves the lady of the land,

Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood
Is all meridian, as if never fann'd

By the black wind that chills the polar flood.

My blood is all meridian; were it not,

I had not left my clime, nor should I be,
In spite of tortures, ne'er to be forgot,

A slave again of love,—at least of thee.

'Tis vain to struggle-let me perish young-
Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;

To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,
And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved.

April, 1819.

EPIGRAM.

FROM THE FRENCH OF RULHIÈRES.9

IF, for silver or for gold,

You could melt ten thousand pimples
Into half a dozen dimples,

Then your face we might behold,

Looking, doubtless, much more snugly;

Yet even then 'twould be d-d ugly.

August 12, 1819.

9 ["Would you like an epigram-a translation? It was written on some Frenchwoman, by Rulhières, I believe.”—Lord B. to Mr. Murray, Aug. 12, 1819.]