Explore "Fragment of an Epistle to Thomas Moore" by Lord Byron on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
‘What say I? ' - not a syllable further in prose; / I'm your man ‘of all measures,' dear / Tom, - so here goes! Here goes, for a swim on the stream of old / Time, On those buoyant supporters, the bladders of rhyme.
If our weight breaks them down, and we sink in the flood, / We are smother'd, at least, in respectable mud, / Where the Divers of Bathos lie drown'd in a heap, / And Southey's last Pean has pillow'd his sleep; / That Felo de se,' who, half drunk with his malmsey, / Walk'd out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea, / Singing ‘Glory to God' in a spick and span stanza, / The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked) never man saw.