Ye! who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on-it honours none you wish to mourn:
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one,-and here he lies.

NEWSTEAD ABBEY, November 30, 1808.

TO TIME.

TIME! on whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die-

Hail thou! who on my birth bestow'd
Those boons to all that know thee known;
Yet better I sustain thy load,

For now I bear the weight alone.

I would not one fond heart should share
The bitter moments thou hast given;
And pardon thee, since thou couldst spare
All that I loved, to peace or heaven.

To them be joy or rest, on me
Thy future ills shall press in vain:
I nothing owe but years to thee,
A debt already paid in pain.

Yet even that pain was some relief;

It felt, but still forgot thy power:
The active agony of grief

Retards, but never counts the hour.

In joy I've sigh'd to think thy flight
Would soon subside from swift to slow;

Thy cloud could overcast the light,
But could not add a night to woe;

For then, however drear and dark
My soul was suited to thy sky;
One star alone shot forth a spark
To prove thee not-Eternity.

That beam hath sunk, and now thou art
A blank; a thing to count and curse,
Through each dull tedious trifling part,
Which all regret, yet all rehearse.

One scene even thou canst not deform;
The limit of thy sloth or speed
When future wanderers bear the storm
Which we shall sleep too sound to heed:

And I can smile to think how weak
Thine efforts shortly shall be shown,
When all the vengeance thou canst wreak
Must fall upon-a nameless stone.

LINES INSCRIBED UPON A CUP FORMED FROM A SKULL.

START not-nor deem my spirit fled :

In me behold the only skull,
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaff'd, like thee:
I died: let earth my bones resign:
Fill up--thou canst not injure me;

The worm hath fouler lips than thine.
Better to hold the sparkling grape,

Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet's shape

The drink of gods, than reptile's food.
Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others' let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst: another race,
When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth's embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.
Why not-since through life's little day
Our heads such sad effects produce?
Redeem'd from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs, to be of use.

NEWSTEAD ABBEY, 1808.

PROMETHEUS.

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?

A silent suffering, and intense;

The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,

And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;

And the inexorable Heaven,

And the deaf tyranny of Fate,

The ruling principle of Hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die;
The wretched gift eternity

Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precept less
The sum of human wretchedness,

And strengthen Man with his own mind;

But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;

And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence :
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself-and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concentred recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy
And making Death a Victory!

DIODATI, July, 1816.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE TRAVELLERS' BOOK AT ORCHOMENUS.

IN THIS BOOK A TRAVELLER HAD WRITTEN:

"FAIR Albion, smiling, sees her son depart,
To trace the birth and nursery of art:

Noble his object, glorious is his aim;

He comes to Athens, and he writes his name!"

BENEATH WHICH LORD BYRON INSERTED THE FOLLOWING:

THE modest bard, like many a bard unknown,
Rhymes on our names, but wisely hides his own;
But yet, whoe'er he be, to say no worse,

His name would bring more credit than his verse.

LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM, AT MALTA.

As o'er the cold sepulchral stone

Some name arrests the passer-by;
Thus, when thou view'st this page alone,
May mine attract thy pensive eye!

And when by thee that name is read,
Perchance in some succeeding year,
Reflect on me as on the dead,

And think my heart is buried here.

September 14, 1809.

WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS
TO ABYDOS.*

IF, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont

(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!

If, when the wintry tempest roar'd,
He sped to Hero, nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current pour'd,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!
For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat to-day.
But since he cross'd the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo-and-Lord knows what beside,

And swam for Love, as I for Glory;

*On the 3d of May 1810, while the "Salsette" (Captain Bathurst) was lying in the Dardanelles, Lieutenant Ekenhead of that frigate and the writer of these rhymes swam from the European shore to the Asiatic-by the by, from Abydos to Sestos would have been more correct. The whole distance from the place whence we started to our landing on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles; though the actual breadth is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such that no boat can row directly across, and it may, in some measure, be estimated from the circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the parties in an hour and five, and by the other in an hour and ten minutes. The water was extremely cold, from the melting of the mountain snows. About three weeks before, in April, we had made an attempt; but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chillness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored below the castles, when we swam the straits, as just stated; entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic, fort. Chevalier says that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Oliver mentions its having been done by a Neapolitan; but our consul, Tarragona, remembered neither of these circumstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt. A number of the "Salsette's" crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance; and the only thing that surprised me was, that, as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its practicability.

"Twere hard to say who fared the best:

Sad mortals! thus the Gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest;

For he was drown'd, and I've the ague.

May 9, 1810.

TRANSLATION OF THE FAMOUS GREEK
WAR SONG.

“ Δεύτε παῖδες τῶν Ελλήνων.” *

SONS of the Greeks, arise!

The glorious hour's gone forth,

And, worthy of such ties,

Display who gave us birth.

CHORUS.

Sons of Greeks! let us go
In arms against the foe,

Till their hated blood shall flow
In a river past our feet.

Then manfully despising
The Turkish tyrant's yoke,
Let your country see you rising,
And all her chains are broke.
Brave shades of chiefs and sages,

Behold the coming strife!
Hellénes of past ages,

Oh, start again to life!

At the sound of my trumpet, breaking
Your sleep, oh, join with me!

And the seven-hill'd city seeking,†
Fight, conquer, till we 're free.

Sons of Greeks, &c.

Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers

Lethargic dost thou lie?

Awake, and join thy numbers
With Athens, old ally!

Leonidas recalling,

That chief of ancient song,
Who saved ye once from falling,

The terrible! the strong!

Who made that bold diversion

In old Thermopylæ,

And warring with the Persian

To keep his country free;

With his three hundred waging
The battle, long he stood,
And like a lion raging,
Expired in seas of blood.

Sons of Greeks, &c.

*The song was written by Riga, who perished in the attempt to revolutionise Greece. This translation is as literal as the author could make it in verse. It is of the same measure as that of the original.

† Constantinople.