George Gordon, Lord Byron

“ Then glare the lamps, then whirl the wheels, then roar
Through street and square fast flashing chariots hurl'd
Like harness'd meteors; then along the floor
Chalk mimics painting; then festoons are twirl'd;
Then roll the brazen thunders of the door,
Which opens to the thousand happy few
An earthly paradise of "Or Molu."
LXVIII
There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink
With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz,
The only dance which teaches girls to think,
Makes one in love even with its very faults. ”

“ They are young, but know not youth -- it is anticipated;
Handsome but wasted, rich without a sou;
Their vigour in a thousand arms is dissipated;
Their cash comes from, their wealth goes to a Jew ”

“ And should you doubt, pray ask of your next neighbour,
When for a passport, or some other bar
To freedom, he applied (a grief and a bore) ,
If he found not his spawn of taxborn riches,
Like lap-dogs, the least civil sons of b-----s.
XLII
But Juan was received with much "empressement:" --
These phrases of refinement I must borrow
From our next neighbours' land, where, like a chessman,
There is a move set down for joy or sorrow
Not only in mere talking, but the press. ”

“ I say, Don Juan, wrapt in contemplation,
Walk'd on behind his carriage, o'er the summit,
And lost in wonder of so great a nation,
Gave way to 't, since he could not overcome it.
"And here," he cried, "is Freedom's chosen station;
Here peals the people's voice, nor can entomb it
Racks, prisons, inquisitions; resurrection
Awaits it, each new meeting or election.
X
"Here are chaste wives, pure lives; here people pay
But what they please; and if that things be dear,
'T is only that they love to throw away
Their cash, to show how much they have a-year. ”

“ Through coaches, drays, choked turnpikes, and a whirl
Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion;
Here taverns wooing to a pint of "purl,"
There mails fast flying off like a delusion;
There barbers' blocks with periwigs in curl
In windows; here the lamplighter's infusion
Slowly distill'd into the glimmering glass
(For in those days we had not got to gas) ; --
XXIII
Through this, and much, and more, is the approach
Of travellers to mighty Babylon:
Whether they come by horse, or chaise, or coach,
With slight exceptions, all the ways seem one. ”

“ Crack'd, shiver'd, vanish'd, scarcely gazed on, ere
A silent change dissolves the glittering mass.
Statesmen, chiefs, orators, queens, patriots, kings,
And dandies, all are gone on the wind's wings. ”

“ Though hardly heard through multifarious "damme's" --
The lamps of Westminster's more regular gleam,
The breadth of pavement, and yon shrine where fame is
A spectral resident -- whose pallid beam
In shape of moonshine hovers o'er the pile --
Make this a sacred part of Albion's isle.
XXV
The Druids' groves are gone -- so much the better:
Stone-Henge is not -- but what the devil is it? --
But Bedlam still exists with its sage fetter,
That madmen may not bite you on a visit ”

“ Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent,
Because the times have hardly left them one tenant.
LXXXI
Some who once set their caps at cautious dukes,
Have taken up at length with younger brothers:
Some heiresses have bit at sharpers' hooks:
Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers ”

“ Whose cities Night by no means deigns to gloss.
The French were not yet a lamp-lighting nation,
And when they grew so -- on their new-found lantern,
Instead of wicks, they made a wicked man turn.
XXVII
A row of gentlemen along the streets
Suspended may illuminate mankind,
As also bonfires made of country seats ”

“ Their chances; they're too numerous, like the thirty
Mock tyrants, when Rome's annals wax'd but dirty.
LXII
This is the literary lower empire,
Where the prætorian bands take up the matter; --
A "dreadful trade," like his who "gathers samphire,"
The insolent soldiery to soothe and flatter,
With the same feelings as you'd coax a vampire. ”