Have voices--tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves--allies--kings--armies still--
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.

XVII.

Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate,
In honest simple verse, this song to you.
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
'T is that I still retain my "buff and blue;"[12]
My politics as yet are all to educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,
To keep _one_ creed's a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?[13]

Venice, Sept. 16, 1818.


FOOTNOTES:

{3}[1] ["As the Poem is to be published anonymously, _omit_ the
Dedication. I won't attack the dog in the dark. Such things are for
scoundrels and renegadoes like himself" [_Revise_]. See, too, letter to
Murray, May 6, 1819 (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 294); and Southey's letter to
Bedford, July 31, 1819 (_Selections from the Letters, etc._, 1856, in.
137, 138). According to the editor of the _Works of Lord Byron_, 1833
(xv. 101), the existence of the Dedication "became notorious" in
consequence of Hobhouse's article in the _Westminster Review_, 1824. He
adds, for Southey's consolation and encouragement, that "for several
years the verses have been selling in the streets as a broadside," and