Famed for contemptuous breach of sacred ties,
By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies;
Between them stands another sceptred thing--
It moves, it reigns--in all but name, a king:
Charles to his people, Henry to his wife,
- In him the double tyrant starts to life:
Justice and death have mix'd their dust in vain,
Each royal vampire wakes to life again.
Ah, what can tombs avail!--since these disgorge
The blood and dust of both--to mould a George.
More verses by George Gordon Byron
- The Giaour: A Fragment Of A Turkish Tale
- On Napoleon's Escape From Elba
- Don Juan: Canto The Seventeenth
- The Siege Of Corinth
- Lines Written On A Blank Leaf Of 'The Pleasures Of Memory'