Endorsed, "MS. Lord Byron. The King's visit to Ireland; a very seditious and horrible libel, which never was intended to be published, and which Lord B. called, himself, silly, being written in a moment of ill nature.—C. B.">[
[ [603] ["I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa."—Pisa, 6th November, 1821, Detached Thoughts, No. 118, Letters, 1901, v. 466.]
[ [604] ["I told Byron that his poetical sentiments of the attractions of matured beauty had, at the moment, suggested four lines to me; which he begged me to repeat, and he laughed not a little when I recited the following lines to him:—
"Oh! talk not to me of the charms of Youth's dimples,
There's surely more sentiment center'd in wrinkles.
They're the triumphs of Time that mark Beauty's decay,
Telling tales of years past, and the few left to stay."
Conversations of Lord Byron, 1834, pp. 255, 256.]
[ [605] {563}[These verses were written by Lord Byron a little before he left Italy for Greece. They were meant to suit the Hindostanee air, "Alia Malla Punca," which the Countess Guiccioli was fond of singing.—Editor's note, Works, etc., xiv. 357, Pisa, September, 1821.]
[ [606] {564}[Probably "To Lady Blessington," who includes them in her Conversations of Lord Byron.]
[ [607] {565}[For reproduction of Lawrence's portrait of Lady Blessington, see "List of Illustrations," Letters, 1901, v. [xv.].]
[ [608] {566}[Aristomenes, the Achilles of the Alexandrian poet Rhianus (Grote's History of Greece, 1869, ii. 428), is the legendary hero of the second Messenian War (B.C. 685-668). Thrice he slew a hundred of the Spartan foe, and thrice he offered the Hekatomphonia on Mount Ithome. His name was held in honour long after "the rowers on their benches" heard the wail, "Pan, Pan is dead!" At the close of the second century of the Christian era, Pausanias (iv. 16. 4) made a note of Messenian maidens hymning his victory over the Lacedæmonians—
"From the heart of the plain he drove them,
And he drove them back to the hill:
To the top of the hill he drove them,
As he followed them, followed them still!"