Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/87

CANTO I.] XLVI.

But all unconscious of the coming doom,

The feast, the song, the revel here abounds;

Strange modes of merriment the hours consume,

Nor bleed these patriots with their country's wounds:

Nor here War's clarion, but Love's rebeck sounds;

Here Folly still his votaries inthralls;

And young-eyed Lewdness walks her midnight rounds:

Girt with the silent crimes of Capitals,

Still to the last kind Vice clings to the tott'ring walls.

XLVII.

Not so the rustic—with his trembling mate

He lurks, nor casts his heavy eye afar,

Lest he should view his vineyard desolate,

Blasted below the dun hot breath of War.

No more beneath soft Eve's consenting star

Fandango twirls his jocund Castanet: