Selected Poems

George Gordon, Lord Byron

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780486277844
• eBook ISBN:
  9780486153582
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Byron's free-spirited lifestyle combined with his rare poetic gift to make him one of the foremost figures of the Romantic Era. This collection of his poems, richly varied in mood and content, captures the essence of his great achievement. Among the thirty-one poems included are convivial song-like poems, love poems, travel poems, humorous and satiric poems.
Shorter works such as the famous "She Walks in Beauty," "Stanzas to Augusta" and "So We'll Go No More a Roving" are well represented. Also here are important longer works — "The Prisoner of Chillon," "Beppo," "The Vision of Judgment," all unabridged — and lyrics excerpted from Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and the play Manfred. Taken together, these are poems that draw readers quickly into the passions, humors, and convictions of a poet whose life and work truly embodied the Romantic spirit.

The Vision of Judgment¹⁵

I

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate:

His keys were rusty and the lock was dull,

So little trouble had been given of late;

Not that the place by any means was full,

But since the Gallic era ‘eighty-eight’

The devils had ta’en a longer, stronger pull,

And ‘a pull all together,’ as they say

At sea—which drew most souls another way.

II

The angels all were singing out of tune,

And hoarse with having little else to do,

Excepting to wind up the sun and moon,

Or curb a runaway young star or two,

Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon

Broke out of bounds o’er the ethereal blue,

Splitting some planet with its playful tail,

As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.

III

The guardian seraphs had retired on high,

Finding their charges past all care below;

Terrestrial business fill’d nought in the sky

Save the recording angel’s black bureau;

Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply

With such rapidity of vice and wo,

That he had stripp’d off both his wings in quills,

And yet was in arrear of human ills.

IV

His business so augmented of late years,

That he was forced, against his will no doubt

(Just like those cherubs, earthly ministers),

For some resource to turn himself about,

And claim the help of his celestial peers,

To aid him ere he should be quite worn out

By the increased demand for his remarks;

Six angels and twelve saints were named his clerks.

V

This was a handsome board—at least for heaven;

And yet they had even then enough to do,

So many conquerors’ cars were daily driven,

So many kingdoms fitted up anew;

Each day too slew its thousands six or seven,

Till at the crowning carnage, Waterloo,

They threw their pens down in divine disgust—

The page was so besmear’d with blood and dust.

VI

This by the way; ’t is not mine to record

What angels shrink from: even the very devil

On this occasion his own work abhorr’d,

So surfeited with the infernal revel:

Though he himself had sharpen’d every sword,

It almost quench’d his innate thirst of evil.

(Here Satan’s sole good work deserves insertion—

’T is, that he has both generals in reversion.)

VII

Let’s skip a few short years of hollow peace,

Which peopled earth no better, hell as wont,

And heaven none—they form the tyrant’s lease,

With nothing but new names subscribed upon ’t:

’T will one day finish: meantime they increase,

‘With seven heads and ten horns,’ and all in front,

Like Saint John’s foretold beast; but ours are born

Less formidable in the head than horn.

VIII

In the first year of freedom’s second dawn

Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one

Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn

Left him nor mental nor external sun:

A better farmer ne’er brush’d dew from lawn,

A worse king never left a realm undone!

He died—but left his subjects still behind,

One half as mad, and t’ other no less blind.

IX

He died!—his death made no great stir on earth;

His burial made some pomp; there was profusion

Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great dearth

Of aught but tears—save those shed by collusion;

For these things may be bought at their true worth;

Of elegy there was the due infusion—

Bought also; and the torches, cloaks, and banners,

Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners,

X

Form’d a sepulchral melodrame. Of all

The fools who flock’d to swell or see the show,

Who cared about the corpse? The funeral

Made the attraction, and the black the wo.

There throbb’d not there a thought which pierced the pall;

And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,

It seem’d the mockery of hell to fold

The rottenness of eighty years in gold.

XI

So mix his body with the dust! It might

Return to what it must far sooner, were

The natural compound left alone to fight

Its way back into earth, and fire, and air;

But the unnatural balsams merely blight

What nature made him at his birth, as bare

As the mere million’s base unmummied clay—

Yet all his spices but prolong decay.

XII

He’s dead—and upper earth with him has done;

He’s buried; save the undertaker’s bill

Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone

For him, unless he left a German will;

But where’s the proctor who will ask his son?

In whom his qualities are reigning still,

Except that household virtue, most uncommon,

Of constancy ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Note
• Table of Contents
• Damætas
• ‘I Would I Were a Careless Child’
• ‘When We Two Parted’
• Stanzas to a Lady on Leaving England
• To Florence
• The Girl of Cadiz
• ‘Adieu, Adieu! My Native Shore’
• Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos
• ‘Maid of Athens, Ere We Part’
• ‘She Walks in Beauty’
• ‘Oh! Snatch’d Away in Beauty’s Bloom’
• The Destruction of Sennacherib
• Stanzas for Music
• Stanzas for Music
• Stanzas for Music
• Fare Thee Well
• The Prisoner of Chillon
• Darkness
• Stanzas to Augusta
• ‘When the Moon Is on the Wave’
• ‘So We ’ll Go No More a Roving’
• ‘My Boat Is on the Shore’
• ‘Dear Doctor, I Have Read Your Play’
• Beppo
• ‘The Isles of Greece’
• ‘When a Man Hath No Freedom to Fight for at Home’
• ‘Who Kill’d John Keats?’
• Stanzas Written on the Road between Florence and Pisa
• The Vision of Judgment
• On This Day I Complete My Thirty-sixth Year
• Alphabetical List of Titles
• Alphabetical List of First Lines