And that I sing of neither mine nor me, Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction,

Will hint allusions never meant. Ne'er doubt

This-when I speak, I don't hint, but speak out.

89 Whether he married with the third or fourth

Offspring of some sage husband-hunting
countess,

Or whether with some virgin of more
worth.
(I mean in Fortune's matrimonial
bounties)

He took to regularly peopling Earth,
Of which your lawful, awful wedlock
fount is-

Or whether he was taken in for damages,
For being too excursive in his homages,—

90 Is yet within the unread events of time. Thus far, go forth, thou lay, which I will back

Against the same given quantity of rhyme,
For being as much the subject of attack
As ever yet was any work sublime,

By those who love to say that white is
black.

So much the better!-I may stand alone,
But would not change my free thoughts for

a throne.

For Orford and for Waldegrave
You give much more than me you gave;
Which is not fairly to behave,
My Murray!

5 Because if a live dog, 'tis said,
Be worth a lion fairly sped,
A live lord must be worth two dead,
My Murray!

10 Verse hath a better sale than prose,-
And if, as the opinion goes,
Certes, I should have more than those,
My Murray!

But now this sheet is nearly cramm'd, 15 And if you won't,-you may be damn'd, So, if you will, I shan't be shamm'd, My Murray.

peace,

Which peopled earth no better, hell as

It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.

11 So mix his body with the dust! It might Return to what it must far sooner, were The natural compound left alone to fight Its way back into earth, and fire, and air;

But the unnatural balsams merely blight What nature made him at his birth, as bare

As the mere million's base unmummied clay

Yet all his spices but prolong decay.

12 He's dead-and upper earth with him has done;

He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, Or lapidary scrawl,1 the world is gone

For him, unless he left a German will:2 But where's the proctor who will ask his son ?3

In whom his qualities are reigning still, Except that household virtue, most uncommon,

Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman.

15 God help us all! God help me too! I am, God knows, as helpless as the devil can wish,

16

economy

In God to save the like; but if he will Be saving, all the better; for not one am I Of those who think damnation better

still:

I hardly know too if not quite alone am I
In this small hope of bettering future ill
By circumscribing, with some slight re-
striction,

The eternity of hell's hot jurisdiction.

14 I know this is unpopular; I know

'Tis blasphemous; I know one may be danın'd

For hoping no one else may e'er be so;

I know my catechism; I know we're cramm'd

With the best doctrine till we quite o'erflow;

I know that all save England's church have shamm'd,

And that the other twice two hundred churches

And synagogues have made a damn'd bad purchase.

1 inscription on a tombstone

The Georges belonged to the German house of
Hanover. Byron frequently sneered at the
Germans.

A thrust at George IV, who was thought
capable of following the example of George II
in concealing his father's will. See Don Juan,
XI, 78, 3. The proctor was a special officer
of the court.

And not a whit more difficult to damn,

Than is to bring to land a late-hook'd fish,

Or to the butcher to purvey the lamb;

Not that I'm fit for such a noble dish, As one day will be that immortal fry Of almost everybody born to die.

19 "He was, if I remember, king of France;1 That head of his, which could not keep

a crown

On earth, yet ventured in my face to ad

vance

A claim to those of martyrs-like my 24

own:

If I had had my sword, as I had once

When I cut ears off, I had cut him down; But having but my keys, and not my brand, I only knock'd his head from out his hand. 20 "And then he set up such a headless howl, That all the saints came out and took him in;

And there he sits by St. Paul, cheek by jowl;

That fellow Paul-the parvenù!2 The
skin

Of St. Bartholomew, which makes his cowl 25
In heaven, and upon earth redeem'd his
sin,

So as to make a martyr, never sped
Better than did this weak and wooden head.

21 "But had it come up here upon its shoul-
ders,

There would have been a different tale to
tell:

The fellow-feeling in the saint's beholders
Seems to have acted on them like a spell,
And so this very foolish head heaven
solders

Back on its trunk: it may be very well,
And seems the custom here to overthrow
Whatever has been wisely done below."

22 The angel answer'd, "Peter! do not pout:
The king who comes has head and all
entire,

And never knew much what it was about;

26

He did as doth the puppet-by its wire, And will be judged like all the rest, no 27

doubt:

My business and your own is not to

inquire

Into such matters, but to mind our cueWhich is to act as we are bid to do.”

23 While thus they spake, the angelic caravan, Arriving like a rush of mighty wind, Cleaving the fields of space, as doth the

Swan

Some silver stream (say Ganges, Nile, or Inde,

Or Thames, or Tweed), and 'midst them 28

an old man

1 Louis XVI, who was guillotined in January, 1793.

* upstart

With an old soul, and both extremely blind,

Halted before the gate, and in his shroud
Seated their fellow traveller on a cloud.

But bringing up the rear of this bright host
A Spirit of a different aspect waved
His wings, like thunder-clouds above some
coast

Whose barren beach with frequent wrecks is paved;

His brow was like the deep when tempesttoss'd;

Fierce and unfathomable thoughts engraved

Eternal wrath on his immortal face,
And where he gazed a gloom pervaded

space.

As he drew near, he gazed upon the gate Ne'er to be enter'd more by him or sin, With such a glance of supernatural hate, As made Saint Peter wish himself with

in;

He patter'd with his keys at a great rate,

And sweated through his apostolic skin: Of course his perspiration was but ichor,1 Or some such other spiritual liquor.

The very cherubs huddled all together, Like birds when soars the falcon; and they felt

A tingling to the tip of every feather, And form'd a circle like Orion's belt Around their poor old charge; who scarce knew whither

His guards had led him, though they gently dealt

With royal manes (for by many stories, And true, we learn the angels are all Tories).

As things were in this posture, the gate flew

Asunder, and the flashing of its hinges Flung over space an universal hue

Of many-color'd flame, until its tinges Reach'd even our speck of earth, and made

There also are some altar-pieces, though

merits.

31 The cherubs and the saints bow'd down before

That arch-angelic hierarch, the first
Of essences angelical, who wore

The aspect of a god; but this ne'er
nursed

Pride in his heavenly bosom, in whose core
No thought, save for his Maker's serv-
ice, durst

Intrude, however glorified and high;
He knew him but the viceroy of the sky.

32 He and the sombre, silent Spirit met

They knew each other both for good and ill;

Such was their power, that neither could forget

His former friend and future foe; but still

1 She believed that she was to give birth to a new Messiah. See Byron's Don Juan, III, 95, 4, and n. 2 (p. 599).

35

To prove with Hebrew and with Arabic, If Job be allegory or a fact,

But a true narrative; and thus I pick From out the whole but such and such an act

As sets aside the slightest thought of trick.

'Tis every tittle true, beyond suspicion, And accurate as any other vision.