Byron and Shelley are the greatest. But for succinctness in pure beautiful scorn, you can't beat John Gay:
"And the statesman because he's so great
thinks his trade as honest as mine."
(Peachum's opening song in The Beggar's Opera. The "statesman" libelled is Sir Robert Walpole, the notoriously corrupt Whig Prime Minister.) Incidentally, this is the only tune from The Beggars Opera set by Weill in Die Dreigroschenoper, and likewise is sung by Peachum as the first song (after the Moritat) in the opera.
Shane Mage
"This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 30
> >
>Byron rocks! I was just reading V. Woolf's diary. She writes about Don
>Juan/Byron: "When he is serious he is sincere: and he can impinge upon
>any subject he likes. He writes 16 cantos without once flogging his
>flanks. He had, evidently, the able witty mind of what my father Sir
>Leslie would have called a thoroughly masculine nature."
>
>"..16 cantos without once flogging his flanks."
>
>Cracked me up. She's pretty great too.
>
>Joanna
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