The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 7/Epigram (1)
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For works with similar titles, see Epigram and Epigram (Byron).
EPIGRAM.
FROM THE FRENCH OF RULHIÈRES.[1]
If for silver, or for gold,
You could melt ten thousand pimples
Into half a dozen dimples,
Then your face we might behold,
Looking, doubtless, much more snugly,
Yet even then 'twould be damned ugly.
August 12, 1819.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 235.]
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 235.]
- ↑ ["Would you like an epigram—a translation? It was written on some Frenchwoman, by Rulhières, I believe."—Letter to Murray, August 12, 1819, Letters, 1900, iv. 346. Claude Carloman de Rulhière (1718-1791), historian, poet, and epigrammatist, was the author of Anecdotes sur la révolution de Russie en l'année 1762, Histoire de l'anarchie de Pologne (1807), etc. His epigrams are included in "Poésies Diverses," which are appended to Les jeux de Mains, a poem in three cantos, published in 1808, and were collected in his Œuvres Posthumes, 1819; but there is no trace of the original of Byron's translation. Perhaps it is after de Rulhière, who more than once epigrammatizes "Une Vieille Femme."]