The themes of the poem—a few lines farther on—are summed up in words of Byronic pith and vigor:—
——youthful Love,
Ill-starred, yet trustful, truthful and sublime
As ever angels chronicled above—
The sorrowings of Beauty in her prime—
Virtue’s reward—the punishment of Crime—
The dark, inscrutable decrees of Fate—
Despair, untold before in prose or rhyme.
We give a few more instances of what we term “quotable” passages—thoughtful, vivid, pungent or vigorous: