Verses Found in a Summerhouse at Hales-owen
Verses Found in a Summerhouse at Hales-owen - meaning Summary
Folly Exposed in Public
Byron contrasts an old comic fool—harmless, simple, and amusing—with contemporary fools whose emptiness is tainted by vice. Where Dryden’s innocent fool merely whistled, modern swains misuse leisure and bring public shame. The poet likens them to noxious reptiles that leave visible filth, so their moral corruption marks the places they pass. The tone is censorious, exposing social decline and the ugliness of modern folly.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen Dryden’s fool, ‘unknowing what he sought,’ His hours in whistling spent, ‘for want of thought,’ This guiltless oaf his vacancy of sense Supplied, and amply too, by innocence Did modern swains, possess’d of Cymon’s powers, In Cymon’s manner waste their leisure hours, Th’ offended guests would not, with blushing, see These fair green walks disgraced by infamy. Severe the fate of modern fools, alas! When vice and folly mark them as they pass. Like noxious reptiles o’er the whiten’d wall, The filth they leave still points out where they crawl.
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