[LXXI]
English Songs and other Small Poems, 1834.
[LXXII–LXXVIII]
The first is from the Hebrew Melodies (1815); the next is selected from The Siege of Corinth (1816), 22–33; Alhama (idem) is a spirited yet faithful rendering of the Romance muy Doloroso del Sitio y Toma de Alhama, which existed both in Spanish and in Arabic, and whose effect was such that ‘it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors on the pain of death in Granada’ (Byron); No. LXXV., surely one of the bravest songs in the language, was addressed (idem) to Thomas Moore; the tremendous Race with Death is lifted out of the Ode in Venice (1819); for the next number see Don Juan, III. (1821); the last of all, ‘Stanzas inscribed On this day I completed my Thirty-sixth year’ (1824), is the last verse that Byron wrote.
[LXXIX]
Napier has described the terrific effect of Napoleon's pursuit; but in the operations before Corunna he was distanced, if not out-generalled, by Sir John Moore, and ere the first days of 1809 he gave his command to Soult, who pressed us vainly through the hill-country between Leon and Gallicia, and got beaten at Corunna for his pains. Wolfe, who was an Irish parson and died of consumption, wrote some spirited verses on the flight of Busaco, but this admirable elegy—‘I will show you,’ said Byron to Shelley (Medwin, ii. 154) ‘one you have never seen, that I consider little if at all inferior to the best, the present prolific age has brought forth’—remains his passport to immortality. It was printed, not by the author, in an Irish newspaper; was copied all over Britain; was claimed by liar after liar in succession; and has been reprinted more often, perhaps, than any poem of the century.
[LXXX]
From Snarleyow, or the Dog Fiend (1837). Compare Nelson to Collingwood: ‘Victory, 25th June, 1805,—May God bless you and send you alongside the Santissima Trinidad.’
[LXXXI], [LXXXII]
The story of Casabianca is, I believe, untrue; but the intention of the singer, alike in this number and in the next, is excellent. Each indeed is, in its way, a classic. The Mayflower sailed from Southampton in 1626.