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.

THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED:

II.

II.

III.

III.

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Hail, nimble Nymph! to whom the young hussar,
The whiskered votary of Waltz and War,

484

His night devotes, despite of spur and boots;
A sight unmatched since Orpheus and his brutes:
Hail, spirit-stirring Waltz!—beneath whose banners
A modern hero fought for modish manners;
On Hounslow's heath to rival Wellesley's fame,

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Cocked, fired, and missed his man—but gained his aim;
Hail, moving muse! to whom the fair one's breast
Gives all it can, and bids us take the rest.
Oh! for the flow of Busby, or of Fitz,
The latter's loyalty, the former's wits,

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To “energise the object I pursue,”
And give both Belial and his Dance their due!

To rival Lord Wellesley's, or his nephew's, as the reader pleases:—the one gained a pretty woman, whom he deserved, by fighting for; and the other has been fighting in the Peninsula many a long day, “by Shrewsbury clock,” without gaining anything in that country but the title of “the Great Lord,” and “the Lord;” which savours of profanation, having been hitherto applied only to that Being to whom “Te Deums” for carnage are the rankest blasphemy.—It is to be presumed the general will one day return to his Sabine farm: there

“To tame the genius of the stubborn plain,
Almost as quickly as he conquer'd Spain!”

The Lord Peterborough conquered continents in a summer; we do more—we contrive both to conquer and lose them in a shorter season. If the “great Lord's” Cincinnatian progress in agriculture be no speedier than the proportional average of time in Pope's couplet, it will, according to the farmer's proverb, be “ploughing with dogs.”

By the bye—one of this illustrious person's new titles is forgotten—it is, however, worth remembering—“Salvador del mundo!” credite, posteri! If this be the appellation annexed by the inhabitants of the Peninsula to the name of a man who has not yet saved them—query—are they worth saving, even in this world? for, according to the mildest modifications of any Christian creed, those three words make the odds much against them in the next—“Saviour of the world,” quotha!—it were to be wished that he, or any one else, could save a corner of it—his country. Yet this stupid misnomer, although it shows the near connection between superstition and impiety, so far has its use, that it proves there can be little to dread from those Catholics (inquisitorial Catholics too) who can confer such an appellation on a Protestant. I suppose next year he will be entitled the “Virgin Mary;” if so, Lord George Gordon himself would have nothing to object to such liberal bastards of our Lady of Babylon.