Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/534

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THE WALTZ.

Brunck's heaviest tome for ballast,[1] and, to back it,
Of Heynè,[2] such as should not sink the packet.[3]


Fraught with this cargo—and her fairest freight,
Delightful Waltz, on tiptoe for a Mate,80
The welcome vessel reached the genial strand,
And round her flocked the daughters of the land.
Not decent David, when, before the ark,
His grand Pas-seul excited some remark;
Not love-lorn Quixote, when his Sancho thought
The knight's Fandango friskier than it ought;
Not soft Herodias, when, with winning tread,
Her nimble feet danced off another's head;
Not Cleopatra on her Galley's Deck,
Displayed so much of leg or more of neck,90
Than Thou, ambrosial Waltz, when first the Moon
Beheld thee twirling to a Saxon tune!


To You, ye husbands of ten years! whose brows
Ache with the annual tributes of a spouse;

To you of nine years less, who only bear
  1. [Richard Franz Philippe Brunck (1729-1803). His editions of the Anthologia Græca, and of the Greek dramatists are among his best known works. Compare Sheridan's doggerel— {{block center|"Huge leaves of that great commentator, old Brunck,
    Perhaps is the paper that lined my poor Trunk."]
  2. [Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812) published editions of Virgil (1767-1775), Pindar (1773), and Opuscula Academica, in six vols. (1785-1812).]
  3. As much of Heyne as should not sink the packet.—[MS. M.]