Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/446

404 Ere your first score of cantos Time unrolls,

Beware—for God's sake, don't begin like Bowles!

"Awake a louder and a loftier strain," —

And pray, what follows from his boiling brain?—

He sinks to Southey's level in a trice,

Whose Epic Mountains never fail in mice!

Not so of yore awoke your mighty Sire

The tempered warblings of his master-lyre;

Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,

"Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit"

He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,

Earth, Heaven, and Hades echo with the song.