Free Selected Poems by Byron Page A

amid the racket,
Ere we sail on board the Packet.
Now our boatmen quit their mooring,
And all hands must ply the oar;
Baggage from the quay is lowering,
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We’re impatient – push from shore.
‘Have a care! that case holds liquor –
Stop the boat – I’m sick – oh Lord!’
‘Sick, ma’am, damme, you’ll be sicker
Ere you’ve been an hour on board.’
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Thus are screaming
Men and women,
Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks;
Here entangling,
All are wrangling,
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Stuck together close as wax. –
Such the general noise and racket,
Ere we reach the Lisbon Packet.
Now we’ve reach’d her, lo! the captain,
Gallant Kidd, commands the crew;
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Passengers their berths are clapt in,
Some to grumble, some to spew.
‘Hey day! call you that a cabin?
Why ’tis hardly three feet square;
Not enough to stow Queen Mab in –
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Who the deuce can harbour there?’
‘Who, sir? plenty –
Nobles twenty
Did at once my vessel fill.’ –
‘Did they? Jesus,
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How you squeeze us!
Would to God they did so still:
Then I’d scape the heat and racket
Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet.’
Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you?
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Stretch’d along the deck like logs –
Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you!
Here’s a rope’s end for the dogs.
Hobhouse muttering fearful curses,
As the hatchway down he rolls,
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Now his breakfast, now his verses,
Vomits forth – and damns our souls.
‘Here’s a stanza
On Braganza –
Help!’ – ‘A couplet?’ – ‘No, a cup
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Of warm water –’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Zounds! my liver’s coming up;
I shall not survive the racket
Of this brutal Lisbon Packet.’
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Now at length we’re off for Turkey,
Lord knows when we shall come back!
Breezes foul and tempests murky
May unship us in a crack.
But, since life at most a jest is,
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As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is,
Then laugh on – as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
Great and small things,
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Sick or well, at sea or shore;
While we’re quaffing,
Let’s have laughing –
Who the devil cares for more? –
Some good wine! and who would lack it,
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Ev’n on board the Lisbon Packet?
    Falmouth Roads, June 30, 1809.

Maid of Athens, ere we part

Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh, give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
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Hear my vow before I go,

By those tresses unconfined,
Woo’d by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
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Kiss thy soft cheeks’ blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,

By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
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By all the token-flowers 1 that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love’s alternate joy and woe,

Maid of Athens! I am gone:
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Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol, 2
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!

Athens, 1810.

Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos 1
If, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!
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If, when the wintry tempest roar’d,
He sped to Hero, nothing loth,
And thus of old thy current pour’d,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!
For me , degenerate modern wretch,
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Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I’ve done a feat to-day.
But since he cross’d the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
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To woo, – and – Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;
‘Twere hard to say who fared the best:
Sad mortals! thus the Gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest:
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For he was drown’d, and I’ve the ague.
May 9, 1810.

To Thyrza
Without a stone to mark the spot,
And say, what Truth might well have said,
By all, save one, perchance forgot,
Ah! wherefore art thou lowly laid?
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By many a shore and many a sea
Divided, yet beloved in vain;
The past, the future fled to thee
To bid us meet – no – ne’er again!
Could this have been – a word, a look
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That