lore, followed. In 1803, after some years of wandering, the poet went to live at Greta Hall, near Keswick, which remained his home until his death. Besides a long line of prose works, Southey wrote innumerable short poems. Famous among them is the ballad of the battle of Blenheim, with its homely irony: "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide, And many a childing mother then And new-born baby died; But things like that, you know, must be At every famous victory." [Sidenote: Brilliant occasional pieces] [Sidenote: Southey's works] [Sidenote: "Stanzas in My Library"] Southey nourished a passionate hatred against Napoleon Bonaparte. Again and again he invoked the Muse against the world conqueror. Thus he wrote to Landor in 1814: "For five years I have been preaching the policy, the duty, the necessity of declaring Bonaparte under the ban of human nature." Under this stress of feeling he wrote his great "Ode During the Negotiations for Peace." It was the most powerful of his occasional pieces. In 1813, he was made Poet Laureate. As such, it fell to him to write another occasional piece on the death of the Princess Charlotte. The grace and beauty of his lines on this occasion have long outlived the memory of that lamented princess. Unlike his great contemporaries, Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, Southey never achieved a great material success. Having married young, he often walked the streets, so he himself confessed, "not having eighteen pence for a dinner, nor bread and cheese at his lodgings." In 1835, when he was sixty-one years old, he wrote to Sir Robert Peel while declining the offer of a baronetcy, "Last year for the first time in my life I was provided with a year's expenditure beforehand." Yet his works at this time filled nearly a hundred volumes. In the words of his brother poets: "Southey's epics crammed the creaking shelves." It was in his declining age that he wrote the prophetic "Stanzas Written in My Library": My days among the Dead are passed: Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The almighty minds of old; My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. * * * * * My hopes are with the Dead, anon My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on Through all Futurity; Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust. [Sidenote: Wordsworth, Poet Laureate] [Sidenote: "The Lost Leader"] After Southey's death, William Wordsworth was made Poet Laureate. His acceptance of this benefice from the government incensed his more radical friends. Robert Browning then wrote the famous invective lines entitled "The Lost Leader":