Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)
Generally known as Lord Byron, was an Anglo-Scottish poet and leading figure in Romanticism.
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.
A man must serve his time to every trade
Save censure — critics are ready-made.
I loved my country, and I hated him.
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?
He left a corsair's name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.
What's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!
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!"
The best of prophets of the future is the past.
They never fail who die
In a great cause.
Lord Byron is great only as a poet; as soon as he reflects, he is a child.
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears.
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, 22
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
These are our realms, no limit to their sway,—
Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.
It still saddens me that Lord Byron, who showed such impatience with the fickle public, wasn't aware of how well the Germans can understand him and how highly they esteem him. With us the moral and political tittle-tattle of the day falls away, leaving the man and the talent standing alone in all their brilliance.
A great poet belongs to no country; his works are public property, and his Memoirs the inheritance of the public.
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life,
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow.
Who killed John Keats?
"I," says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
"'Twas one of my feats."
With just enough of learning to misquote.
The fatal facility of the octosyllabic verse.