The works of Lord Byron :: :: University of Virginia Library

The works of Lord Byron

A new, revised and enlarged edition, with illustrations. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge and R. E. Prothero

Byron, George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

Vol. I. HOURS OF IDLENESS AND OTHER EARLY POEMS.

II.

III.

IV.

JEUX D'ESPRIT AND MINOR POEMS, 1798–1824.

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To the famed throng now paid the tribute due,
Neglected Genius! let me turn to you.
Come forth, oh Campbell! give thy talents scope;
Who dares aspire if thou must cease to hope?
And thou, melodious Rogers! rise at last,
Recall the pleasing memory of the past;

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Arise! let blestiremembrance still inspire,
And strike to wonted tones thy hallowed lyre;
Restore Apollo to his vacant throne,
Assert thy country's honour and thine own.
What! must deserted Poesy still weep
Where her last hopes with pious Cowper sleep?
Unless, perchance, from his cold bier she turns,
To deck the turf that wraps her minstrel, Burns!
No! though contempt hath marked the spurious brood,
The race who rhyme from folly, or for food,
Yet still some genuine sons 'tis hers to boast,
Who, least affecting, still affect the most:
Feel as they write, and write but as they feel—
Bear witness Gifford Sotheby, Macneil.

It would be superfluous to recall to the mind of the reader the authors of The Pleasures of Memory and The Pleasures of Hope, the most beautiful didactic poems in our language, if we except Pope's Essay on Man: but so many poetasters have started up, that even the names of Campbell and Rogers are become strange.

Gifford, author of the Baviad and Mœviad, the first satires of the day, and translator of Juvenal,

Sotheby, translator of Wieland's Oberon and Virgil's Georgics, and author of Saul, an epic poem.

Macneil, whose poems are deservedly popular, particularly “Scotland's Scaith,” and the “Waes of War,” of which ten thousand copies were sold in one month.