Byron at Shelley’s Burning

The brain of Shelley cooks

Inside its smoking case; 

The bones and flesh fall off

And show the seed of Shelley’s thought.

The wine of Byron fumes

Inside his cup of skull;

The lengthy hair of Percy

Streams on his romantic pyre.

The scissor legs of Byron

Swim where Shelley drowned

In wine romantic seas

Of Italy. And Byron notes

The wine red beauty

In the sheets of flame

Of Shelley, as he sees

The body burn upon the beach.

But Byron’s brain could not

Foresee how he would die

In Greece, his blood ebbing

Into his eye out of a drunken leech.