Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/186

 that date. The lines have not the young Byron's diction, fire or fancy. But if they be at all from his hand, it is not impossible to ascribe them to his hesitant muse, and to place their composition as among those miscellaneous first poems (several of them homosexual) which Byron put together as a collection for the year 1811, out of which series the young poet withdrew certain pieces either by his own or by other counsel. The title given the lines. "Don Leon" suggests per se some indifferent imitator; they have the quality of an immature or second-rate verse-writer, on a stereotyped model. Nevertheless, the allusion contained in them is in key with Byron's childish days at Newstead Abbey; and the poet's intimate biographers have alluded to it. Byron met, soon after his mother had removed with him to Newstead, a young village lad, and became almost inseparable from this humble friend, day by day. Byron continued the intimacy even after he had less opportunity, by being sent to Harrow. The poetical description tallies with this juvenile acquaintance that in its time filled such a place in Byron's lonely boyish life at home, and in his precociously sensitive—if then so immature—heart: they even convey with some elegance the quality of one boy's homosexual love for another;

"Then say, was I or Nature in the wrong? If, yet a boy, one inclination strong In wayward fancies, domineered my soul, And bade complete defiance to control? Among the yeomen's sons on my estate, A gentle boy would on my mansion wait … Full well I know, though decency forbad The same caresses to a rustic lad, Love, love it was that made my eyes delight To have his person ever in my sight … Of humble birth was he, patrician I, And yet this youth was my idolatry! Oh, how I loved to press his cheek to min ! How fondly would my arms his waist entwine! 'Twas like a philter poured into my veins …