Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/450

408 Counts cent per cent, and smiles, or vainly frets,

O'er hoards diminished by young Hopeful's debts;

Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy,

Complete in all life's lessons—but to die;

Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please,

Commending every time, save times like these;

Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot,

Expires unwept—is buried—Let him rot!

But from the Drama let me not digress,

Nor spare my precepts, though they please you less.

Though Woman weep, and hardest hearts are stirred,

When what is done is rather seen than heard,

Yet many deeds preserved in History's page

Are better told than acted on the stage;

The ear sustains what shocks the timid eye,

And Horror thus subsides to Sympathy,

True Briton all beside, I here am French—

Bloodshed 'tis surely better to retrench:

The gladiatorial gore we teach to flow

In tragic scenes disgusts though but in show;

We hate the carnage while we see the trick,

And find small sympathy in being sick.

Not on the stage the regicide Macbeth

Appals an audience with a Monarch's death;