English
living poets I have avoided mentioning;--we have none who
will not survive their productions. Taste is over with us;
and another century will sweep our empire, our literature,
and our name, from all but a place in the annals of mankind.
"November 30. 1807.
BYRON."
Among the papers of his in my possession are several detached poems
(in all nearly six hundred lines), which he wrote about this period,
but never printed--having produced most of them after the publication
of his "Hours of Idleness." The greater number of these have little,
besides his name, to recommend them; but there are a few that, from
the feelings and circumstances that gave rise to them, will, I have no
doubt, be interesting to the reader. When he first went to Newstead,
on his arrival from Aberdeen, he planted, it seems, a young oak in
some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so
should he. Some six or seven years after, on revisiting the spot, he
found his oak choked up by weeds, and almost destroyed. In this
circumstance, which happened soon after Lord Grey de Ruthen left
Newstead, originated one of these poems, which consists of five
stanzas, but of which the few opening lines will be a sufficient
specimen:--
"Young Oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground,
I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine;
That thy dark-waving branches would flourish around,
And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.
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