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Yet jarring sects convulse a sister isle,

And light with maddening hands the mutual pile.

"Tis done, 'tis past, since Pallas warns in vain; The Furies seize her abdicated reign:

Wide o'er the realm they wave their kindling brands,

And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.

But one convulsive struggle still remains,

And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains.
The bannered pomp of war, the glittering files,
O'er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles;
The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum,
That bid the foe defiance ere they come;
The hero bounding at his country's call,
The glorious death that consecrates his fall,
Swell the young heart with visionary charms,
And bid it antedate the joys of arms.
But know, a lesson you may yet be taught,
With death alone are laurels cheaply bought.
Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight,

His day of mercy is the day of fight.

But when the field is fought, the battle won,

Though drenched with gore, his woes are but begun.
His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name;
The slaughtered peasant and the ravished dame,
The rifled mansion and the foe-reaped field,
Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.
Say with what eye along the distant down
Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?

How view the column of ascending flames
Shake his red shadow o'er the startled Thames?
Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine
That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine:
Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,
Go, ask thy bosom who deserves them most.
The law of heaven and earth is life for life,
And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife.” *

* ["The beautiful but barren Hymettus, the whole coast of Attica, her hills and mountains, Pentelicus, Anchesmus, Philopappus, etc. etc. are in themselves poetical; and would be so if the name of Athens, of Athenians, and her very ruins, were swept from the earth. But, am I to be told that the "nature" of Attica would be more poetical without the "art" of the Acropolis? of the Temple of Theseus? and of the still all Greek and glorious monuments of her exquisitely artificial genius? Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical, the Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands? The COLUMNS of Cape Colonna, or the Cape itself? The rocks at the foot of it, or the recollection that Falconer's ship was bulged upon them? There are a thousand rocks and capes far more picturesque than those of the Acropolis and Cape Sunium in themselves. But it is the “art,” the columns, the temples, the wrecked vessel, which give them their antique and their modern poetry, and not the spots themselves. I opposed, and will ever oppose, the robbery of ruins from Athens, to instruct the English in sculpture; but why did I do so? The ruins are as poetical in Piccadilly as they were in the Parthenon; but the Parthenon and its rock are less so without them. Such is the poetry of art."- Byron's Letters, 1821.]

THE WALTZ;

AN APOSTROPHIC HYMN.*

"Qualis in Eurota ripis, aut per juga Cynthi,
Exercet Diana choros."

VIRGIL.

"Such on Eurota's banks, or Cynthia's height,
Diana seems and so she charms the sight,
When in the dance the graceful goddess leads
The quire of nymphs, and overtops their heads."
DRYDEN'S VIRGIL.

[This trifle was written at Cheltenham in the autumn of 1812, and published anonymously in the spring of the following year. It was not very well received at the time by the public; and Byron was by no means anxious that it should be considered as his handiwork. "I hear," he says, in a letter to a friend, "that a certain malicious publication on waltzing is attributed to me. This report, I suppose, you will take care to contradict; as the author, I am sure, will not like that I should wear his cap and bells."]

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