Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/452

410 Nor call a ghost, unless some curséd scrape

Must open ten trap-doors for your escape.

Of all the monstrous things I'd fain forbid,

I loathe an Opera worse than Dennis did;

Where good and evil persons, right or wrong,

Rage, love, and aught but moralise—in song.

Hail, last memorial of our foreign friends,

Which Gaul allows, and still Hesperia lends!

Napoleon's edicts no embargo lay

On whores—spies—singers—wisely shipped away.

Our giant Capital, whose squares are spread

Where rustics earned, and now may beg, their bread,

In all iniquity is grown so nice,

It scorns amusements which are not of price.

Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear

Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear,

Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore,

His anguish doubling by his own "encore;"

Squeezed in "Fop's Alley," jostled by the beaux,