Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/397

Rh The puny schoolboy and his early lay

Men pardon, if his follies pass away;

But who forgives the Senior's ceaseless verse,

Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes grow worse?

What heterogeneous honours deck the Peer!

Lord, rhymester, petit-maître, pamphleteer!

So dull in youth, so drivelling in his age,

His scenes alone had damned our sinking stage;

But Managers for once cried, "Hold, enough!"

Nor drugged their audience with the tragic stuff.

Yet at their judgment let his Lordship laugh,

And case his volumes in congenial calf;