There was something so warm and sublime in the core
Of an Irishman's heart, that I envy—thy dead.[1]
32.
Or, if aught in my bosom can quench for an hour
My contempt for a nation so servile, though sore,
Which though trod like the worm will not turn upon power,
'Tis the glory of Grattan, and genius of Moore![2][3]
[First published, Paris, September 19, 1821.]
STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE ROAD BETWEEN FLORENCE AND PISA.[4]
1.
Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story—
The days of our Youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.[5]
- ↑ —— that I envy their dead.—[Medwin.]
- ↑ They're the heart—the free spirit—the genius of Moore.—[MS. M.]
- ↑ ["Signed W. L. B——, M.A., and written with a view to a Bishoprick."—Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 527, note. Endorsed, "MS. Lord Byron. The King's visit to Ireland; a very seditious and horrible libel, which never was intended to be published, and which Lord B. called, himself, silly, being written in a moment of ill nature.—C. B."]
- ↑ ["I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa."—Pisa, 6th November, 1821, Detached Thoughts, No. 118, Letters, 1901, v. 466.]
- ↑ ["I told Byron that his poetical sentiments of the attractions of matured beauty had, at the moment, suggested four lines to me; which he begged me to repeat, and he laughed not a little when I recited the following lines to him:—
"Oh! talk not to me of the charms of Youth's dimples,
There's surely more sentiment center'd in wrinkles.
They're the triumphs of Time that mark Beauty's decay,
Telling tales of years past, and the few left to stay."Conversations of Lord Byron, 1834, pp. 255, 256.]
