'Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,
Hye you there apace;
Let none come there but that virgins been
To adorn her grace:
And when you come, whereas she in place,
See that your rudeness do not you disgrace;
Bind your fillets fast,
And gird in your waste,
For more fineness, with a taudry lace.'
'Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine
With gylliflowers;
Bring coronatiöns, and sops in wine,
Worn of paramours;
Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies
And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;
The pretty paunce
And the chevisaunce
Shall match with the fair flowre-delice.'[192]
Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to test all by.
(2) 'No more, no more, since thou art dead,
Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,
No more, at yearly festivals,
We cowslip balls
Or chains of columbines shall make,
For this or that occasion's sake.
No, no! our maiden pleasures be
Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.'[193]
(3) 'Death is now the phœnix rest,
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest.
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:
Truth and beauty buried be.'[194]
If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you turn to Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him to give means of exact comparison, you will, or should, recognise these following kinds of mischief in him. First, if any one offends him—as for instance Mr. Southey, or Lord Elgin—'his manners have not that repose that marks the caste,' &c. This defect in his Lordship's style, being myself scrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of vituperative language, I need not say how deeply I deplore.[195]
Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work there is yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange taint; and indefinable—evening flavour of Covent Garden, as it were;—not to say, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it proclaims itself—London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll, things would of course have been different. But it was his fate to come to town—modern town—like Michael's son; and modern London (and Venice) are answerable for the state of their drains, not Byron.
Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever; his jest sadder than his earnest; while, in Elizabethan work, all lament is full of hope, and all pain of balsam.
Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single line, prophetic of all things since and now. 'Where he gazed, a gloom pervaded space.'[196]
So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town, being an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster Bridge, remarking how the city now did like a garment wear the beauty of the morning; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated only the garment which the beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear from the city: and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepressible religious rapture, calls God to witness that the houses seem asleep, Byron, lame demon as he was, flying smoke-drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance, and sees what the mighty cockney heart of them contains in the still lying of it, and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it,