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,
And, form'd for flying,

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
Feel broken-hearted,
And, all hopes thwarted,
Expect to die;
A few years older,
Ah! how much colder
They might behold her

For whom they sigh!
When link'd together,
In every weather,

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
Such territory

Quits with disdain.
Still, still advancing,
With banners glancing,
His power enhancing,

(1) [V. L." That sped his Spring."]

He must move on-
Repose but cloys him,
Retreat destroys him,

Love brooks not a degraded throne.

And then recover,

As from a dream.
While each bewailing
The other's failing,
With wrath and railing,
All hideous seem-
While first decreasing,
Yet not quite ceasing,
Wait not till teasing

All passion blight:
If once diminish'd

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
Leave no cold traces-
The same fond faces

As through the past;
And eyes, the mirrors

Of your sweet errors

Reflect but rapture—not least though last.

VI.

True, separations

Ask more than patience;
What desperations

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,
Is but for boys-

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,
If his sorrows in exile be great or be small,
So the Pharisee's glories around her she gather,
And the saint patronizes her "charity ball!"

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,
And five since we were two.

January 2. 1821.

ON MY THIRTY-THIRD BIRTH-DAY.

JANUARY 22. 1821. (2)

THROUGH life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragg'd to three and thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing-except thirty-three.

(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