[314] {419} [From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray, now for the first time printed.]
[ne] {421}
1.
The red light glows, the wassail flows,
Around the royal hall;
And who, on earth, dare mar the mirth
Of that high festival?
The prophet dares—before thee glows—
Belshazzar rise, nor dare despise
The writing on the wall!
2
Thy vice might raise th' avenging steel,
Thy meanness shield thee from the blow—
And they who loathe thee proudly feel.—[MS.]
[nf] {422}
The words of God along the wall.—[MS. erased.]
The word of God—the graven wall.—[MS.]
[ng] Behold it written——.—[MS.]
[nh] ——thy sullied diadem.—[MS.]
[315] {423} [Byron gave these verses to Moore for Mr. Power of the Strand, who published them, with music by Sir John Stevenson. "I feel merry enough," he wrote, March 2, "to send you a sad song." And again, March 8, 1815, "An event—the death of poor Dorset—and the recollection of what I once felt, and ought to have felt now, but could not—set me pondering, and finally into the train of thought which you have in your hands." A year later, in another letter to Moore, he says, "I pique myself on these lines as being the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote." (March 8, 1816.)—Letters, 1899, iii. 181, 183, 274.]
[ni] 'Tis not the blush alone that fades from Beauty's cheek.—[MS.]
[nj] {424} As ivy o'er the mouldering wall that heavily hath crept.—[MS.]