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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)

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Vol. I. HOURS OF IDLENESS AND OTHER EARLY POEMS.
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Vol. II.
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Vol. III.
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Vol. IV.
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Vol. V.
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SARDANAPALUS:
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THE TWO FOSCARI:
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CAIN:
  
[epigraph]
  
[dedication]
  
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
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ACT I.
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ACT II.
 I. 
Scene I.
 II. 
Scene II.
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ACT III.
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HEAVEN AND EARTH;
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WERNER;
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WERNER.
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THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED:
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THE AGE OF BRONZE;
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THE ISLAND;
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[volume]

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363

“Why slumbers Gifford?” once was asked in vain;
Why slumbers Gifford? let us ask again.
Are there no follies for his pen to purge?
Are there no fools whose backs demand the scourge?
Are there no sins for Satire's Bard to greet?
Stalks not gigantic Vice in every street?
Shall Peers or Princes tread pollution's path,
And 'scape alike the Laws and Muse's wrath?
Nor blaze with guilty glare through future time,
Eternal beacons of consummate crime?
Arouse thee, Gifford! be thy promise claimed,
Make bad men better, or at least ashamed.
 

Mr. Gifford promised publicly that the Baviad and Mœviad should not be his last original works: let him remember, “Mox in reluctantes dracones.”

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