Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/224

TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ.^[1][2]

"Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico."—Horace.

Dear Long, in this sequester'd scene,^[3]
⁠While all around in slumber lie,
The joyous days, which ours have been
⁠Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye;
Thus, if, amidst the gathering storm,
While clouds the darken'd noon deform,
Yon heaven assumes a varied glow,
I hail the sky's celestial bow,
Which spreads the sign of future peace,
And bids the war of tempests cease.
Ah! though the present brings but pain,

I think those days may come again;

1. To E. N. L. Esq.—[Hours of Idleness. Poems O. and T.]
2. [The MS. of these verses is at Newstead. Long was with Byron at Harrow, and was the only one of his intimate friends who went up at the same time as he did to Cambridge, where both were noted for feats of swimming and diving. Long entered the Guards, and served in the expedition to Copenhagen. He was drowned early in 1809, when on his way to join the army in the Peninsula; the transport in which he sailed being run down in the night by another of the convoy. "Long's father," says Byron, "wrote to me to write his son's epitaph. I promised—but I had not the heart to complete it. He was such a good, amiable being as rarely remains long in this world; with talent and accomplishments, too, to make him the more regretted."—Diary, 1821; Life, p. 32. See also memorandum (Life, p. 31, col. ii.).]
3. Dear L——.—[Hours of Idleness. Poems O. and T.]