Untitled (Epitaph for Lord Castlereagh)
Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler scene than this.
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh.
Stop traveller, and piss.
Commentary
I was reminded of this when I saw it in a usenet post by my good friend Shakib Otaqui.
Byron sounds off about one of the most unpopular and reviled politicians of his era - a man who was forced to resign and spent the last fifteen years of his life a mental wreck before he committed suicide by cutting himself with a penknife.
If you want to rest in peace, never piss off a poet, is all I can say about the poem.
Profile of Lord Castlereagh -
http://proni.nics.gov.uk/records/private/castlere.htm
Castlereagh also had to face the wrath of Shelley, who wrote “The Mask of Anarchy”, blaming the massacre at St.Peters Fields on Lord Castlereagh and his fellow minister Lord Sidmouth.
That is almost biblical, and (I think) compares Castlereagh and Sidmouth to an evil version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
However, it is, unfortunately, a bit too long for minstrels, weighing in at a whole 91 stanzas (plus a couple more, given different manuscripts / editions of this grand poem).
Anyway, it is available online at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/FrankenDemo/PShelley/anarchy.html
srs
[Martin adds: The last line seems like a parody of Wordsworth’s “Stop here, or gently pass”, from ‘The Solitary Reaper’. Byron’s sarcasm is a touch heavy-handed, but, as always, a fun read - he certainly has a much better ear than the oft-reviled (at least here on Minstrels <g>) Shelley, whose ‘Mask of Anarchy’ made me wince with the sheer dysphony and clumsiness of the verse. I mean, the man rhymed “Italy” with “sea”! In the first two lines, no less!! Sorry, I’ll stop now (:]
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
mad · 8 December 2002
“Shelley, whose ‘Mask of Anarchy’ made me wince with the sheer dysphony and clumsiness of the verse. I mean, the man rhymed “Italy” with “sea”! In the first two lines, no less!! Sorry, I’ll stop now (:”
In fairness to our good friend Shelley, ‘Mask of Anarchy’ wasn’t the only poem he wrote on the subject.
To Sidmouth and Castlereagh
As from their ancestral oak
Two empty ravens wind their clarion,
Yell by yell, and croak by croak,
When they scent the noonday smoke
Of fresh human carrion:–
As two gibbering night-birds flit
From their bowers of deadly yew
Through the night to frighten it–
When the moon is in a fit,
And the stars are none, or few:–
As a shark and dogfish wait
Under an Atlantic isle
For the Negro-ship, whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,
Wrinkling their red gills the while–
Are ye–two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one.
Some of the most vivid imagery around can be found in this poem, especially the last lines. Though I’m not particularly fond of Shelley, a somewhat better than “Mask of Anarchy’, no? :-)
Actually, I rather like this poem, why don’t I send this as a submission instead of a comment?
Cheers,
-Daniel
P.S. Always good to see that Rice alumni are improving the world! (Class of 2002)