When stripped of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt;
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey—
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter.—Back, ye baffled fiends!
The hand of death is on me,—but not yours!”
“And yet people will say that Byron was an immoral writer!” murmured Kremlin—“In spite of the tremendous lesson conveyed in those lines! There is something positively terrifying in that expression—