Guided by you, our earnest aims presume To renovate the Drama with the dome; The scenes of Shakespeare and our bards of old With due observance splendidly unfold, Yet raise and foster with parental hand The living talent of our native land. O! may we still, to sense and nature true, Delight the many, nor offend the few. Though varying tastes our changeful Drama claim, Still be its moral tendency the same, To win by precept, by example warn, To brand the front of Vice with pointed scorn, And Virtue’s smiling brows with votive wreaths adorn. IV. CUI BONO? BY LORD B. {12a} [LORD BYRON.] [Lord Byron died 19th April, 1824, in his 37th year.] I. Sated with home, of wife, of children tired, The restless soul is driven abroad to roam; {12b} Sated abroad, all seen, yet nought admired, The restless soul is driven to ramble home; Sated with both, beneath new Drury’s dome The fiend Ennui awhile consents to pine, There growls, and curses, like a deadly Gnome, Scorning to view fantastic Columbine, Viewing with scorn and hate the nonsense of the Nine. {14} II. Ye reckless dopes, who hither wend your way To gaze on puppets in a painted dome, Pursuing pastimes glittering to betray, Like falling stars in life’s eternal gloom, What seek ye here? Joy’s evanescent bloom? Woe’s me! the brightest wreaths she ever gave Are but as flowers that decorate a tomb. Man’s heart, the mournful urn o’er which they wave, Is sacred to despair, its pedestal the grave. III. Has life so little store of real woes, That here ye wend to taste fictitious grief? Or is it that from truth such anguish flows, Ye court the lying drama for relief? Long shall ye find the pang, the respite brief: Or if one tolerable page appears In folly’s volume, ’tis the actor’s leaf, Who dries his own by drawing others’ tears, And, raising present mirth, makes glad his future years. IV. Albeit, how like Young Betty {15a} doth he flee! Light as the mote that daunceth in the beam, He liveth only in man’s present e’e; His life a flash, his memory a dream, Oblivious down he drops in Lethe’s stream. Yet what are they, the learned and the great? Awhile of longer wonderment the theme! Who shall presume to prophesy _their_ date, Where nought is certain, save the uncertainty of fate? V.