Quotes
Quotes - Lord Byron
Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?
Oh that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And hating no one, love but only her!
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin,--his control
Stops with the shore.
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow,--
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy.
I wantoned with thy breakers,
. . . . .
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane,--as I do here.
And what is writ is writ,--
Would it were worthier!
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been,--
A sound which makes us linger; yet--farewell!
Hands promiscuously applied,
Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side.
He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,--
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.
Such is the aspect of this shore;
'T is Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
For freedom's battle, once begun,
Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own;
And every woe a tear can claim,
Except an erring sister's shame.
The keenest pangs the wretched find
Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,
The waste of feelings unemployed.
Better to sink beneath the shock
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.
The cold in clime are cold in blood,
Their love can scarce deserve the name.
I die,--but first I have possess'd,
And come what may, I have been bless'd.
She was a form of life and light
That seen, became a part of sight,
And rose, where'er I turn'd mine eye,
The morning-star of memory!
Yes, love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Alla given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime;
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all save the spirit of man is divine?
Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess
The might, the majesty of loveliness?
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole,--
And oh, that eye was in itself a soul!
