Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/55

⁠Thou sat'st, while reverend Ocean smil'd,
⁠And mirthful strains the hours beguil'd;
⁠The Nymphs and Tritons danc'd around,
Nor yet thy doom was fix'd, nor Jove relentless frown'd.^[1]

Harrow, December 1, 1804.

LINES

WRITTEN IN "LETTERS OF AN ITALIAN NUN AND AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN, BY J. J. ROUSSEAU:^[2] FOUNDED ON FACTS."

"Away, away,—your flattering arts
May now betray some simpler hearts;
And you will smile at their believing,
And they shall weep at your deceiving."

ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING,^[3] ADDRESSED TO MISS ——.

Dear simple girl, those flattering arts,

(From which thou'dst guard frail female hearts,)^[4]

1. ["My first Harrow verses (that is, English, as exercises), a translation of a chorus from the Promeiheus of Æschylus, were received by Dr. Drury, my grand patron (our headmaster), but coolly. No one had, at that time, the least notion that I should subside into poetry."—Life p. 20. The lines are not a translation but a loose adaptation or paraphrase of part of a chorus of the Promtheus Vinctus, l. 528, sq.]
2. [A second edition of this work, of which the title is, Letters, etc., translated from the French of Jean Jacques Rousseau, was published in London, in 1784. It is, probably, a literary forgery.]
3. Answer to the above.—[4to]
4. From which you'd.—[4to]