A superfluous pageant, for by the Lord Harry!
They'll find, where they're going, much more than they carry.
Or—
The Braziers, it seems, are determined to pass
An Address, and present it themselves all in brass;—
| A superfluous | pageant |
for, by the Lord Harry! |
They'll find, where they're going, much more than they carry.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 442.]
ON MY THIRTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY.
January 22, 1821.[1]
Through Life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing—except thirty-three.
- ↑ ["To-morrow is my birthday—that is to say, at twelve o' the clock, midnight; i.e. in twelve minutes I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!! and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose. * * * It is three minutes past twelve—''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and I am now thirty-three!—
'Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,
Labuntur anni;'—but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done."—Extracts from a Diary, January 21, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 182.
In a letter to Moore, dated January 22, 1821, he gives another version—
"Through Life's road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing—except thirty-three."Ibid., p. 229.]
and I embarked in 1819, when Thomas came to Venice, like Coleridge's Spring, 'slowly up this way.'" Again, in a letter to Moore, dated January 22, 1821, he encloses slightly different versions of both epigrams, and it is worth noting that the first line of the pendant epigram has been bowdlerized, and runs thus—
"Of Wordsworth the grand metaquizzical poet."
—Letters, 1901, v. 226, 230.]
