You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know, At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only Blackbird in the dish;

1 This scornful dedication was prompted by Byron's hatred of what he regarded as the apostasy of the Lake poets from the cause of freedom, also by his critical disapproval of their poetry, and finally by personal animosity toward Southey. For the judgment on Wordsworth, which was shared by Shelley and other radical poets, com pare Browning's The Lost Leader.

Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopyla!

What silent still? and silent all?

Ah! no;-the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, "Let one living head, But one arise, we come, we come!" 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain-in vain: strike other chords: Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,

And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble callHow answers each bold Bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet: Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gaveThink ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! We will not think of themes like these! It made Anacreon's song divine;

He served but served PolycratesA tyrant; but our masters then

Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese

Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades!

Oh! that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line

Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks,
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks,

The only hope of courage dwells: But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade-
I see their glorious black eyes shine;.

But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

And, when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,

It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.

1 This satire was written as an answer to the Poet Laureate Southey's official elegy on George III, A Vision of Judgment, 1821, in which is given an account of the assumption of the monarch into Heaven. The second selection is a part of a debate between Satan and the Archangel Michael concerning George III's title to salvation. Witnesses are summoned, including Junius. At the close Southey appears and begins to read his poem.