38
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
[CANTO I.
Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow
To Halls deserted, portals gaping wide:
Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how
Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied;[1]
Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide!
XXIV.
Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened!N4
Oh! dome displeasing unto British eye!
With diadem hight Foolscap, lo! a Fiend,
A little Fiend that scoffs incessantly,
There sits in parchment robe arrayed, and by[2]
His side is hung a seal and sable scroll,
Where blazoned glare names known to chivalry,[3]
And sundry signatures adorn the roll,[4]
Whereat the Urchin points and laughs with all his soul.[5]
- ↑ Vain are the pleasuances by art supplied.—[MS. D.]
- ↑ —— yclad, and by.—[MS. D.]
- ↑ Where blazoned glares a name spelt "Wellesley."—[MS. D.]
- ↑ —— are on the roll.—[MS. erased, D.]
- ↑ The following stanzas, which appear in the MS., were excluded at the request of Dallas (see his letter of October 10, 1811, Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, 1824, pp. 173-187), Letters, 1898, ii. 51:—
{{block center|In golden characters right well designed
First on the list appeareth one "Junot;"
Then certain other glorious names we find,
(Which Rhyme compelleth me to place below:)
Dull victors! baffled by a vanquished foe,
Wheedled by conynge tongues of laurels due,
Stand, worthy of each other in a row—
Sirs Arthur, Harry, and the dizzard Hew
Dalrymple, seely wight, sore dupe of t'other tew.
Convention is the dwarfy demon styled
That foiled the knights in Marialva's dome:
