1788-1821.
Childe Harold.
Canto i. St. 9.
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
Canto ii. St. 2.
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
Stanza 6.
The dome of Thought, the palace of the soul.
Stanza 23.
Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?
Stanza 73.
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Stanza 76.
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
Stanza 88.
Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground.
Age shakes Athena's towers, but spares gray Marathon.
Canto iii. St. 1.
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart.
Stanza 21.
There was a sound of revelry by night.
And all went merry as a marriage-bell.
Stanza 28.
Battle's magnificently stern array!
Stanza 55.
The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine.
Stanza 92.
The sky is changed! and such a change! O night,
And storm, and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman.
Stanza 113.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me.
Canto iv. St. 1.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs.
Stanza 24.
The cold—the changed—perchance the dead anew,
The mourned—the loved—the lost—too many! yet how few!
Stanza 49.
Fills
The air around with beauty.
Stanza 69.
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss.
Stanza 79.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands.
Stanza 109.
Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.
Stanza 115.
The nympholepsy of some fond despair.
Stanza 145.
While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Home falls, the world.[22]
Stanza 177.
O 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!
Stanza 178.
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.
Stanza 179.
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined and unknown.
Stanza 185.
And what is writ, is writ.
Would it were worthier!
Memoranda from his Life.
I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
The Giaour. Line 72.
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.
Line 92.
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Line 106.
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Line 123.
For freedom's battle, once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
Line 418.
And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own;
And every won a tear can claim,
Except an erring sister's shame.
Parasina. St. 1.
It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word.
The Bride of Abydos.
Canto i. St. 1.
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle.
Stanza 6.
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!
Canto ii. St. 20.
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
He makes a solitude, and calls it—peace.[23]
Darkness.
I had a dream which was not all a dream.
Lara.
Canto i. St. 2.
Lord of himself—that heritage of woe!
The Corsair.
Canto i. St. 1.
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,
Survey our empire, and behold our home.
Stanza 3.
She walks the waters like a thing of life,
And seems to dare the elements to strife.
Stanza 8.
The power of Thought—the magic of the Mind.
The many still must labor for the one!
Stanza 9.
There was a laughing devil in his sneer.
Hope withering fled, and Mercy sighed Farewell!
Stanza 15.
Farewell!
For in that word—that fatal word—howe'er
We promise—hope—believe—there breathes despair.
Canto iii. St. 22.
No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe.
Stanza 24.
He left a corsair's name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.
Beppo.
Stanza 27.
For most men (till by losing rendered sager) Will back their own opinions by a wager.
Stanza 45.
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.
Stanza 80.
O Mirth and Innocence! O Milk and Water!
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days!
The Dream.
And both were young, and one was beautiful.
And to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
And they were canopied by the blue sky, so cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.
The Waltz.
Hands promiscuously applied,
Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side.
English Bards.
'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.
As soon
Seek roses in December—ice in June.
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff.
Believe a woman, or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that's false, before
You trust in critics.
Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the
Psalms.
O Amos Cottle! Phoebus! what a name!
Monody on the Death of Sheridan.
When all of Genius which can perish dies.
Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.
Who track the steps of Glory to the grave.
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die in moulding Sheridan.
Don Juan.
Canto i. St. 22.
But, O ye lords of ladies intellectual!
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?
Canto i. St. 117.
Whispering I will ne'er consent, consented.
Canto xiii. St. 95.
Society is now one polished horde,
Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.
Canto xv. St. 13.
The devil hath not, in all his quiver's choice,
An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.
Hebrew Melodies.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.