Byron in homespun = Byron i vadmel

It suited Byron well, but then Byron was Byron; Auden excelled at it, but then Auden mastered all verse forms. I… well, I floundered. The Untitled Epic (that, I grieve to confess, is its title) which I have just reread completely for the first time since writing it, much to my great embarrassment, seems to be much more directly autobiographical than I had remembered it to be. The scene I will inflict on you is the poetic version I attempted of that red-headed Derwent’s ravishing of me. I call him Richard Jones in this instance and make him House-captain. As Isherwood was to do in Christ op her And His Kind I refer to myself in this epic as ‘Fry’, ‘Stephen’ and occasionally, like Byron, ‘our hero. We are at verse fifty something by now, I had planned twelve Cantos, each of a hundred verses. Richard Jones has sent Fry down to his study ostensibly to punish him for being in bed late. Fry waits outside the door in his dressing-gown and pyjamas, hoping he isn’t going to be beaten too badly. I apologise for the completely show-offy and senseless semi-quotations from everything from Anthony and Cleopatra to The Burial Of Sir John Moore at Corunna ...»