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  • from Don Juan
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from Don Juan

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Canto X

XIV
The lawyer and the critic but behold 
     The baser sides of literature and life, 
And nought remains unseen, but much untold, 
     By those who scour those double vales of strife. 
While common men grow ignorantly old, 
     The lawyer’s brief is like the surgeon’s knife, 
Dissecting the whole inside of a question, 
And with it all the process of digestion. 

XV
A legal broom’s a moral chimney-sweeper, 
     And that’s the reason he himself’s so dirty; 
The endless soot bestows a tint far deeper 
     Than can be hid by altering his shirt; he 
Retains the sable stains of the dark creeper, 
     At least some twenty-nine do out of thirty, 
In all their habits; — not so you, I own; 
As Cæsar wore his robe you wear your gown. 

XVI
And all our little feuds, at least all mine, 
     Dear Jefferson, once my most redoubted foe 
(As far as rhyme and criticism combine 
     To make such puppets of us things below), 
Are over: Here’s a health to “Auld Lang Syne!” 
     I do not know you, and may never know 
Your face — but you have acted on the whole 
Most nobly, and I own it from my soul. 

XVII
And when I use the phrase of “Auld Lang Syne!” 
     ‘T is not address’d to you — the more’s the pity 
For me, for I would rather take my wine 
     With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud city. 
But somehow, — it may seem a schoolboy’s whine, 
     And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty, 
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred 
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head, — 

XVIII
As “Auld Lang Syne” brings Scotland, one and all, 
     Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams, 
The Dee — the Don — Balgounie’s brig’s black wall, 
     All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams 
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall, 
     Like Banquo’s offspring; — floating past me seems 
My childhood in this childishness of mine: 
I care not — ‘t is a glimpse of “Auld Lang Syne.” 

XIX
And though, as you remember, in a fit 
     Of wrath and rhyme, when juvenile and curly, 
I rail’d at Scots to show my wrath and wit, 
     Which must be own’d was sensitive and surly, 
Yet ‘t is in vain such sallies to permit, 
     They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early: 
I “scotch’d not kill’d” the Scotchman in my blood, 
And love the land of “mountain and of flood.” 


George Gordon, Lord Byron

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George Gordon, Lord Byron1788 - 1824

Lord Byron's mother was Scottish, and for his first ten years they lived in Aberdeen, where he attended the Grammar, until he succeeded to his title. The most glamorous member of the second generation of Romantic poets, he was...
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