STANZAS. (1) ["COULD LOVE FOR EVER."] I. COULD Love for ever Run like a river, And Time's endeavour Be tried in vain — No other pleasure With this could measure; And like a treasure We'd hug the chain. But since our sighing Ends not in dying, Love plumes his wing; Then for this reason Let's love a season; But let that season be only Spring. (1) [A friend of Lord Byron's, who was with him at Ravenna when he wrote these Stanzas, says,-"They were composed, like many others, with no view of publication, but merely to relieve himself in a moment of suffering. He had been painfully excited by some circumstances which appeared to make it necessary that he should immediately quit Italy; and in the day and the hour that he wrote the song was labouring under an access of fever."-E] II. When lovers parted For whom they sigh! They pluck Love's feather From out his wing He'll stay for ever, But sadly shiver Without his plumage, when past the Spring. (1) III. Like Chiefs of Faction, His life is action A formal paction That curbs his reign, Obscures his glory, Despot no more, he Quits with disdain. (1) [V. L." That sped his Spring."] He must move on- Love brooks not a degraded throne. And then recover, As from a dream. All passion blight: Love's reign is finish'd— Then part in friendship,—and bid good-night.(1) V. So shall Affection To recollection The dear connection Bring back with joy : You had not waited Till, tired or hated, Your passions sated Began to cloy. (1) [V. L." One last embrace, then, and bid good-night."] Your last embraces As through the past; Of your sweet errors Reflect but rapture—not least though last. VI. True, separations Ask more than patience; From such have risen! But yet remaining, What is't but chaining Hearts which, once waning, Beat 'gainst their prison? Time can but cloy love, And use destroy love: The winged boy, Love, You'll find it torture Though sharper, shorter, To wean, and not wear out your joys. THE CHARITY BALL. WHAT matter the pangs of a husband and father, What matters- a heart which, though faulty, was - feeling, Be driven to excesses which once could appalThat the sinner should suffer is only fair dealing, As the saint keeps her charity back for "the ball!" () EPIGRAM ON MY WEDDING-DAY. TO PENELOPE. THIS day, of all our days, has done The worst for me and you: 'Tis just six years since we were one, January 2. 1821. ON MY THIRTY-THIRD BIRTH-DAY. JANUARY 22. 1821. (2) THROUGH life's dull road, so dim and dirty, (1) These lines were written on reading in the newspapers, that Lady Byron had been patroness of a ball in aid of some charity at Hinckley. (2) [In Lord Byron's MS. Diary of the preceding day, we find the following entry: -" January 21. 1821. Dined-visited-came homeread. Remarked on an anecdote in Grimm's Correspondence, which says, that Regnard et la plupart des poëtes comiques étaient gens bilieux et |