"The Niobe of nations! there she stands. Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her wither'd hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago." The following description, from Canto III, of a wild stormy night in the mountains is very characteristic of his nature poetry and of his own individuality:-- "And this is in the night:--Most Glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight-- A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black,--and now, the glee of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth" When George III. died, Southey wrote a poem filled with absurd flattery of that monarch. Byron had such intense hatred for the hypocrisy of society that he wrote his _Vision of Judgment_ (1822) to parody Southey's poem and to make the author the object of satire. Pungent wit, vituperation, and irony were here handled by Byron in a brilliant manner, which had not been equaled since the days of Dryden and Pope. The parodies of most poems are quickly forgotten, but we have here the strange case of Byron's parody keeping alive Southey's original. _Don Juan_ (1819-1824), a long poem in sixteen cantos, is Byron's greatest work. It is partly autobiographic. The sinister, gloomy Don Juan is an ideal picture of the author, who was sore and bitter over his thwarted hopes of liberty and happiness. Therefore, instead of strengthening humanity with hope for the future, this poem tears hope from the horizon, and suggests the possible anarchy and destruction toward which the world's hypocrisy, cant, tyranny, and universal stupidity are tending. The poem is unfinished. Byron followed Don Juan through all the phases of life known to himself. The hero has exciting adventures and passionate loves, he is favored at courts, he is driven to the lowest depths of society, he experiences a godlike happiness and a demoniacal despair. _Don Juan_ is a scathing satire upon society. All its fondest idols,--love, faith, and hope,--are dragged in the mire. There is something almost grand in the way that this Titanic scoffer draws pictures of love only to mock at them, sings patriotic songs only to add-- "Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung The modern Greek in tolerable verse," and mentions Homer, Milton, and Shakespeare only to show how accidental and worthless is fame. Amid the splendid confusion of pathos, irony, passion, mockery, keen wit, and brilliant epigram, which display Byron's versatile and spontaneous genius at its height, there are some beautiful and powerful passages. There is an ideal picture of the love of Don Juan and Haidee:-- "Each was the other's mirror, and but read Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem."