Go, get you gone, you muse and mope—
I hate that silly sigh.
Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,
Or tell me how to die.
There, take it, take my skipping-rope
And hang yourself thereby.
XLIV
The New Timon and the Poets
[From Punch, February 28, 1846. Bulwer Lytton published in 1845 his satirical poem 'New Timon: a Romance of London,' in which he bitterly attacked Tennyson for the civil list pension granted the previous year, particularly referring to the poem 'O Darling Room' in the 1833 volume. Tennyson replied in the following vigorous verses, which made the literary sensation of the year. Tennyson afterwards declared: 'I never sent my lines to Punch. John Forster did. They were too bitter. I do not think that I should ever have published them.'—Life, vol. I, p. 245.]