‘Where is the world?’ cries Young, at eighty—‘Where The world in which a man was born? ‘Alas! Where is the world of eight years past? ’Twas there— I look for it—’tis gone, a globe of glass! Crack’d, shiver’d, vanish’d, scarcely gazed on, ere A silent change dissolves the glittering mass. Statesmen, chiefs, orators, queens, patriots, kings, And dandies, all are gone on the wind’s wings. Where is Napoleon the Grand? God knows. Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell: Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan, all those Who bound the bar or senate in their spell? Where is the unhappy Queen, with all her woes? And where the Daughter, whom the Isles loved well? Where are those martyr’d saints the Five per Cents? And where—oh, where the devil are the rents? Where’s Brummel? Dish’d. Where’s Long Pole Wellesley? Diddled. Where’s Whitbread? Romilly? Where’s George the Third? Where is his will? (That ’s not so soon unriddled.) And where is ‘Fum’ the Fourth, our ‘royal bird?’ Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney’s violin, we have heard: ‘Caw me, caw thee’—for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching. Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That? The Honourable Mistresses and Misses? Some laid aside like an old Opera hat, Married, unmarried, and remarried (this is An evolution oft performed of late). Where are the Dublin shouts—and London hisses? Where are the Grenvilles? Turn’d as usual. Where My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were. Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses? Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals So brilliant, where the list of routs and dances is,— Thou Morning Post, sole record of the panels Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies Of fashion,—say what streams now fill those channels? Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent, Because the times have hardly left them one tenant. Some who once set their caps at cautious dukes, Have taken up at length with younger brothers: Some heiresses have bit at sharpers’ hooks: Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers; Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks: In short, the list of alterations bothers. There’s little strange in this, but something strange is The unusual quickness of these common changes. Talk not of seventy years as age; in seven I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to The humblest individual under heaven, Than might suffice a moderate century through. I knew that nought was lasting, but now even Change grows too changeable, without being new: Nought ’s permanent among the human race, Except the Whigs not getting into place.