XII.

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fix'd,
And offer poison long already mix'd.

That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes all nations- condescend to smile, -
Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

XIV.

A bungler even in its disgusting trade,

And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,

States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confined,
Conspiracy or Congress to be made-

Cobbling at manacles for all mankind—

A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
With God and man's abhorrence for its gains.

XV.

If we may judge of matter by the mind,
Emasculated to the marrow It

Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many masters,* blind

To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,
Fearless

because no feeling dwells in ice,

Its very courage stagnates to a vice.

I doubt if" Laureate” and “Iscariot" be good rhymes, 'but must say, as Ben Jonson did to Sylvester, who challenged him to rhyme with

Jonson answered

"I, John Sylvester

Lay with your sister."

"I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife." Sylvester answer

ed, - "That is not rhyme."-" No," said Ben Jonson; "but it is true."

*For the character of Eutropius. the eunuch and minister at the court of Arcadius, see Gibbon.

XVI.

Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
For I will never feel them; - Italy!
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds

Beneath the lie this State-thing breath'd o'er thee
Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green wounds
Have voices tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves · allies-kings – armics still,
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.

--

-

XVII.

Meantime Sir Laureate I proceed to dedicate,
In honest simple verse, this song to you.
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
"T is that I still retain my "buff and blue;'

My politics as yet are all to educate :

Apostasy 's so fashionable, too,

To keep one creed 's a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian ?*

Venice, September 16, 1818

* I allude not to our friend Landor's hero, the traitor Count Julian, but to Gibbon's hero, vulgarly yclept "The Apostate.'

END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.

THE

WORKS

OF

LORD BYRON.

A New Edition.

EDITED BY

THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.

COMPLETE IN FOUR VOLUMES.

WITH ENGRAVINGS.

VOL. IV.

PHILADELPHIA:

CAREY AND HART.

1843.