Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/567

For all corrupted things are buoyed like corks,^{[decimal 1]}
⁠By their own rottenness, light as an elf,
Or wisp that flits o'er a morass: he lurks,
⁠It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf,
In his own den, to scrawl some "Life" or "Vision,"^{[lower-roman 1]}
As Welborn says—"the Devil turned precisian."^{[decimal 2]}

CVI.

As for the rest, to come to the conclusion

⁠Of this true dream, the telescope is gone^{[lower-roman 2]}
Which kept my optics free from all delusion,
⁠And showed me what I in my turn have shown;
All I saw farther, in the last confusion,
⁠Was, that King George slipped into Heaven for one;
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm.^{[decimal 3]}

1. In his own little nook——.—[MS.]
2. ——the light is now withdrawn.-[MS.]
   ⁠Ra. Oct. 4, 1821.

1. A drowned body lies at the bottom till rotten; it then floats, as most people know. [Byron may, possibly, have heard of the "Floating Island" on Derwentwater."]
2. ⁠"Verily, you brache!
   ⁠The devil turned precisian."
   ⁠Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, act i. sc i.
3. ["Mem. This poem was begun on May 7, 1821, but left off the same day—resumed about the 20th of September of the same year, and concluded as dated."