Quotes
Quotes - Lord Byron
What is the end of fame? 'T is but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper.
At leaving even the most unpleasant people
And places, one keeps looking at the steeple.
There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion.
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.
All who joy would win
Must share it,--happiness was born a twin.
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
A long, long kiss,--a kiss of youth and love.
Alas, the love of women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing.
In her first passion woman loves her lover:
In all the others, all she loves is love.
He was the mildest manner'd man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.
The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung.
. . . . .
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.
The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ.
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave,--
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die.
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns.
And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'T is that I may not weep.
The precious porcelain of human clay.
"Whom the gods love die young," was said of yore.
Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over may be meant to save.
And her face so fair
Stirr'd with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air.
These two hated with a hate
Found only on the stage.
"Arcades ambo,"--id est, blackguards both.
I 've stood upon Achilles' tomb,
And heard Troy doubted: time will doubt of Rome.
