So We’ll Go No More A-Roving

So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
 And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

 

The Lament of Tasso (extract)

the Mind’s canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain,
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;

 

Prometheus (extract)

 

Titan! to whose immortal eyes

The sufferings of mortality,

Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise;

What was thy pity’s recompense?

A silent suffering, and intense;

The rock, the vulture, and the chain,

All that the proud can feel of pain,

The agony they do not show,

The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,

And then is jealous lest the sky

Should have a listener, nor will sigh

Until its voice is echoless.

The Giaour (extract)

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,)
And marked the mild angelic air,
The rapture of Repose that’s there,
The fixed yet tender thraits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And—but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,

Where cold Obstruction’s apathy
Appals the gazing mourner’s heart,
As if to him it could impart
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these and these alone,
Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the Tyrant’s power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first, last look by Death revealed!

 

 

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (extract)

 

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain,
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire.

January 22nd, Missolonghi (extract)

‘Tis time this heart should be unmoved, 

Since others it hath ceased to move: 

Yet though I cannot be beloved, 

Still let me love! 

 

My days are in the yellow leaf; 

The flowers and fruits of Love are gone; 

The worm—the canker, and the grief 

Are mine alone! 

 

The fire that on my bosom preys 

Is lone as some Volcanic Isle; 

No torch is kindled at its blaze 

A funeral pile. 

 

The hope, the fear, the jealous care, 

The exalted portion of the pain 

And power of Love I cannot share, 

 But wear the chain. 

 

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What a poet…What a great poet…

(Byron’s statue at Missolonghi)