Byron

I listen closely to your advice---
And nare say you were no poet.
Heckling my peers in this current time
Will not win me the victory.
Naught will my work be sold for gold.
For what is gold, but empty?
Yet, for a fair wage will I be satisfied,
For even Leonardo was fed by patrons.

Endless torments and perpetual motion---
Conspiracies of Congress---
I know not.
Rather, of a subtle form of wisdome
Do I chew upon, like the ox or lamb---
Does Congress plot?
Do perpetual motions exist?
I know of the moon perpetually
Swinging around the Earth
Makes currents in the oceans.
I know Atoms forever spin their electrons.
Does Congress Plot?
I do not know---

You, with your mistakes, have
Done many ill reputed crimes---
I too.

A Satanic school of poetry
Cannot be attested to a prophetic voice---
Though, like Balaam, the prophets can err, too,
In heart and deed, but not in word.

Southey's verse is dull, 
Like a dry, tasteless wine---
I am generations removed
From him, and his work is rare.

Yet, Southey won Poet Laureate
Because his verse was what is enduring.
It reflected the novelists'
Who would later win your ancient hearts.

I, I am an Anachronism.
Bringing to the modern age
Wisdom it ought never forget.
Truths of Religion, truths of Science
Truths of Brotherhood.

To leave my work to posterity
Would be foolish---
For Southey was wise.
Was he not?
He saw the full fame and success
Of his poems, no sooner, and no later---
A man with an Elephant's memory
Who engineered verse laden with facts
Like a Courtroom's dry conversation.
Yet, he was beloved and read by many.
For that, I call him wise.

For you, living until you were thirty
Could not have lived more luxuriously
And for your politics was destroyed.
Democracy came to England---
And it left because of men like you.
Not men like me.