No More Learning

The rascals, perhaps, may betake them to robbing,
The dogs to be sure have got nothing to eat--
So if we can hang them for breaking a bobbin,
'T will save all the Government's money and meat:
Men are more easily made than machinery--
Stockings fetch better prices than lives--
Gibbets on Sherwood will heighten the scenery,
Shewing how Commerce, how Liberty thrives!

3.

Justice is now in pursuit of the wretches,
Grenadiers, Volunteers, Bow-street Police,
Twenty-two Regiments, a score of Jack Ketches,
Three of the Quorum and two of the Peace;
Some Lords, to be sure, would have summoned the Judges,
To take their opinion, but that they ne'er shall,
For LIVERPOOL such a concession begrudges,
So now they're condemned by _no Judges_ at all.

4.

Some folks for certain have thought it was shocking,
When Famine appeals and when Poverty groans,
That Life should be valued at less than a stocking,
And breaking of frames lead to breaking of bones.
If it should prove so, I trust, by this token,
(And who will refuse to partake in the hope? )
That the frames of the fools may be first to be _broken_,
Who, when asked for a _remedy_, sent down a _rope_.

[First published, _Morning Chronicle, Monday, March_ 2, 1812. ]
[See a _Political Ode by Lord Byron, hitherto unknown
as his production_, London, John Pearson, 46, Pall Mall,
1880, 8? . See, too, Mr. Pearson's prefatory Note, pp. 5, etc. ]

FOOTNOTES:

[20] ["LORD BYRON TO EDITOR OF THE _MORNING CHRONICLE_.

Sir,--I take the liberty of sending an alteration of the two last lines
of stanza 2^d^, which I wish to run as follows:--

'Gibbets on Sherwood will _heighten_ the scenery,
Shewing how commerce, _how_ liberty thrives.
'

I wish you could insert it tomorrow for a particular reason; but I feel
much obliged by your inserting it at all. Of course do _not_ put my name
to the thing--believe me,

Your obliged
and very obedient servant,
BYRON.
8, St. James's Street,
_Sunday, March_ 1, 1812. "]

[21] [For Byron's maiden speech in the House of Lords, February 27,
1812, see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 424-430. ]

[22] [Richard Ryder (1766-1832), second son of the first Baron Harrowby,
was Home Secretary, 1809-12. ]

[23] Lord E. , on Thursday night, said the riots at Nottingham arose from
a "_mistake_. "



TO THE HON^BLE^ M^RS^ GEORGE LAMB. [24]

1.

The sacred song that on mine ear
Yet vibrates from that voice of thine,
I heard, before, from one so dear--
'T is strange it still appears divine.

2.

But, oh! so sweet that _look_ and _tone_
To her and thee alike is given;
It seemed as if for me alone
That _both_ had been recalled from Heaven!

3.