Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)
Generally known as Lord Byron, was an Anglo-Scottish poet and leading figure in Romanticism.
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears.
Lord Byron is great only as a poet; as soon as he reflects, he is a child.
They never fail who die
In a great cause.
The best of prophets of the future is the past.
If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: "Byron is dead!"
What's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!
He left a corsair's name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.
Where is he, the champion and the child
Of all that's great or little, wise or wild;
Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones;
Whose table earth — whose dice were human bones?
I loved my country, and I hated him.
A man must serve his time to every trade
Save censure — critics are ready-made.
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.
In a room at the end of the garden to this house was a magnificent rocking-horse, which a friend had given my little boy; and Lord Byron, with a childish glee becoming a poet, would ride upon it. Ah! why did he ever ride his Pegasus to less advantage?
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast.
There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me.
O Mirth and Innocence! O milk and water!
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days.
In secret we met
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.
Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave.