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. 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. How view the column of ascending flames * ["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, VIRGIL. "Such on Eurota's banks, or Cynthia's height, [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."] (141) |