Lord Byron - To A Lady Who Presented To The Author A Lock Of Hair Braided With His Own, And Appointed A Night In December To Meet Him In The Garden) lyrics

To A Lady Who Presented To The Author A Lock Of Hair Braided With His Own, And Appointed A Night In December To Meet Him In The Garden [1] These locks, which fondly thus entwine, In firmer chains our hearts confine, Than all th' unmeaning protestations Which swell with nonsense, love orations. Our love is fix'd, I think we've prov'd it; Nor time, nor place, nor art have mov'd it; Then wherefore should we sigh and whine, With groundless jealousy repine; With silly whims, and fancies frantic, Merely to make our love romantic? Why should you weep, like Lydia Languish, And fret with self-created anguish? Or doom the lover you have chosen, On winter nights to sigh half frozen; In leafless shades, to sue for pardon, Only because the scene's a garden? For gardens seem, by one consent, (Since Shakespeare set the precedent; Since Juliet first declar'd her pa**ion) To form the place of a**ignation. Oh! would some modern muse inspire, And seat her by a sea-coal fire; Or had the bard at Christmas written, And laid the scene of love in Britain; He surely, in commiseration, Had chang'd the place of declaration. In Italy, I've no objection, Warm nights are proper for reflection; But here our climate is so rigid, That love itself, is rather frigid: Think on our chilly situation, And curb this rage for imitation. Then let us meet, as oft we've done, Beneath the influence of the sun; Or, if at midnight I must meet you, Within your mansion let me greet you: [i.] 'There', we can love for hours together, Much better, in such snowy weather, Than plac'd in all th' Arcadian groves, That ever witness'd rural loves; 'Then', if my pa**ion fail to please, [ii.] Next night I'll be content to freeze; No more I'll give a loose to laughter, But curse my fate, for ever after. [2] [Footnote 1: These lines are addressed to the same Mary referred to in the lines beginning, "This faint resemblance of thy charms." ('Vide ante', p. 32.)] [Footnote 2: In the above little piece the author has been accused by some 'candid readers' of introducing the name of a lady [Julia Leacroft] from whom he was some hundred miles distant at the time this was written; and poor Juliet, who has slept so long in "the tomb of all the Capulets," has been converted, with a trifling alteration of her name, into an English damsel, walking in a garden of their own creation, during the month of 'December', in a village where the author never pa**ed a winter. Such has been the candour of some ingenious critics. We would advise these 'liberal' commentators on taste and arbiters of decorum to read 'Shakespeare'. Having heard that a very severe and indelicate censure has been pa**ed on the above poem, I beg leave to reply in a quotation from an admired work, 'Carr's Stranger in France'.—"As we were contemplating a painting on a large scale, in which, among other figures, is the uncovered whole length of a warrior, a prudish-looking lady, who seemed to have touched the age of desperation, after having attentively surveyed it through her gla**, observed to her party that there was a great deal of indecorum in that picture. Madame S. shrewdly whispered in my ear 'that the indecorum was in the remark.'"—[Ed. 1803, cap. xvi, p. 171. Compare the note on verses addressed "To a Knot of Ungenerous Critics," p. 213.]] [Footnote i: 'Oh! let me in your chamber greet you.' [4to]] [Footnote ii: 'There if my pa**ion' [4to. 'P. on V. Occasions]]