The New Timon Author:Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But worse the bondage in your bland disguise; Europe destroys,—kind Asia only buys ! If dull the Harem, yet its roof protects, And Power, when sated, st... more »ill its slave respects. With you, ev'n pity fades away with love,— No gilded cage gives refuge to the dove; Worse than the sin the curse it leaves behind: Here the crushed heart, or there the poison'd mind,— Your streets a charnel or a market made, For the lorn hunger, or the loathsome trade. Pardon,—Pass on!" " Behold, the Preface done," Arden resumed, " now opens Chapter One!" LORD ARDEN'S TALE. " Reared in a court, a man while yet a boy, Hermes said ' Rise,' and Venus sigh'd ' Enjoy ;' My earlier dreams, like tints in rainbows given, Caught from the Muse, glowed but in clasping heaven; The bird-like instinct of a sphere afar Pined for the air, and chafed against the bar. But can to Guelphs Augustan tastes belong ? Or Georgium Sidus look benign on song ? My short-lived Muse the ungenial climate tried, Breathed some faint warbles, caught a cold, and died! Wise kinsmen whispered ' Hush ! forewarned in time; The feet that rise are not the feet of Rhyme; Your cards are good, but all is in the lead,— Play out the heart, and you are lost indeed: Leave verse, my boy, to unaspiring men— The eagle's pinion never sheds a pen!' " So fled the Muse! What left the Muse behind ? The aimless fancy and the restless mind; The eyes, still won by whatsoe'er was bright, But lost the star's to prize the diamond's light. Man, like the child, accepts the bauble-boon, And clasps the coral where he ask'd the moon. Forbid the pomp and royalty of heaven,— To the born Poet still the earth is given; Duped by each glare in which Corruption seems To give the glory imaged on his dreams: Thus, what had been the thirs...« less