“Perhaps ’tis better;--time’s defacing waves Long have quenched the radiance of my brow-- They who curse me nightly from their graves Scarce could love me were they living now; But my loneliness hath darker ills-- Such dun duns as Conscience, Thought, & Co., Awful Gorgons! Worse than tailors’ bills Twenty golden years ago.
“Did I paint a fifth of what I feel, Oh, how plaintive you would ween I was! But I won’t, albeit I have a deal More to wail about than Kerner has! Kerner’s tears are wept for withered flowers; Mine for withered hopes; my scroll of woe Dates, alas! from youth’s deserted bowers, Twenty golden years ago.
“Yet, may Deutschland’s bardlings flourish long! Me, I tweak no beak among them;--hawks Must not pounce on hawks: besides, in song I could once beat all of them by chalks. Though you find me, as I near my goal, Sentimentalising like Rousseau, Oh, I had a great Byronian soul Twenty golden years ago!
“Tick-tick, tick-tick!--not a sound save Time’s, And the wind gust as it drives the rain-- Tortured torturer of reluctant rhymes, Go to bed and rest thine aching brain! Sleep!--no more the dupe of hopes or schemes; Soon thou sleepest where the thistles blow; Curious anti-climax to thy dreams Twenty golden years ago!”
I find myself now in a great puzzle. I want, first of all, to say I think it most melancholy that Mangan, when of full age and judgment, should have thought Byron had “a great Byronian soul.” Observe, he does not mean that he had a soul greatly like Byron’s, but that he had a soul like the great soul of Byron. I do not believe Byron had a great soul at all. I believe he was simply a fine stage-manager of melodrama, the finest that ever lived, and that as a property-master he was unrivalled; but that to please no one, himself included, could he have written the play. I am not descending to so defiling a depth as to talk about plagiarism. What I wish to say is, that whether Byron stole or not made not the least difference in the world, for he never by the aid of his gifts or his thefts wrote a poem. I wanted further to say of Byron that there was nothing great about him except his vanity. Suddenly I remembered some words of the critic of whom I spoke a while back, in dealing with the question of poetical poetry and poems. I took down the printed page, where I found these lines:--