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CII.

They very generations of the dead

Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb, Until the memory of an age is fled,

And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring's doom: Where are the epitaphs our fathers read?

Save a few glean'd from the sepulchral gloom Which once-named myriads nameless lie beneath; And lose their own in universal death.

CIII.

I canter by the spot each afternoon

Where perish'd in his fame the hero - boy,

Who lived too long for men, but died too soon For human vanity, the young De Foix!

A broken pillar, not uncouthly hewn,

But which neglect is hastening to destroy, Records Ravenna's carnage on its face,

While weeds and ordure rankle round the base. (5)

CIV.

I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid:
A little cupola, more neat than solemn,
Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid
To the bard's tomb, and not the warrior's
column:

The time must come, when both alike decay'd,

The chieftain's trophy, and the poet's volume, Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth, Before Pelides' death, or Homer's birth.

CV.

With human blood that column was cemented,
With human filth that column is defiled,
As if the peasant's coarse contempt were vented
To show his loathing of the spot he soil'd;
Thus is the trophy used, and thus lamented

Should ever be those blood-hounds, from whose
wild

Instinct of gore and glory earth has known

Those sufferings Dante saw in hell alone.

CVI.

Yet there will still be bards; though fame is smoke,
Its fumes are frankincense to human thought;
And the unquiet feelings, which first woke
Song in the world, will seek what then they
sought;

As on the beach the waves at last are broke,

Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought Dash into poetry, which is but passion,

Or at least was so ere it grew a fashion.

CVII.

If in the course of such a life as was
At once adventurous and contemplative,
Men who partake all passions as they pass,
Acquire the deep and bitter power to give
Their images again as in a glass,

And in such colours that they seem to live; You may do right forbidding them to show 'em, But spoil (I think) a very pretty poem.

Oh!

ye,

CVIII.

who make the fortunes of all books!

Benign ceruleans of the second sex!

Who advertise new poems by your looks,
Your,,imprimatur" will ye not annex?
What, must I go to the oblivious cooks?

Those Cornish plunderes of Parnassian wrecks? Ah! must I then the only minstrel be, Proscribed from tasting your Castalian tea!

CIX.

What, can I prove,,a lion" then no more? A ball - room bard, a foolscap, hot-press darling? To bear the compliments of many a bore, And sigh,,,I can't get out," like Yorick's starling; Why then I'll swear, as poet Wordy swore, (Because the world won't read him, always snarling)

That taste is gone, that fame is but a lottery,

Drawn by the blue - coat misses of a coterie.

CX.

Oh!,, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"

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As some one somewhere sings about the sky, And I, ye learned ladies, say of you;

They say your stockings are so (Heaven knows why,

I have examined few pair of that hue);
Blue as the garters which serenely lie
Round the Patrician left-legs, which adorn
The festal midnight, and the levee morn.

CXI.

Yet some of you are most seraphic creatures But times are alter'd since, a rhyming lover, You read my stanzas, and I read your features:

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And- but no matter, all those things are over; Still I have no dislike to learned natures,

For sometimes such a world of virtues cover; I know one woman of that purple school,

The loveliest, chastest, best, but-quite a fool.

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