Who thundering comes on blackest steed,
With slacken'd bit and hoof of speed?
.... Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopylæ?
[332]: Moore's Life of lord Byron, III, 438; 1820.
[333]: I am living here exposed to it (assassination) daily, for I have happened to make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy, and I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution is useless and one thinks of it as of a disease which may or may not strike.
[334]: Galt's Life of lord Byron, 113.
[335]: «Well, we are all born to die—I shall go with regret, but certainly not with fear.—It is every man's duty to endeavour to preserve the life God has given him; so I advise you all to strip: swimming, indeed, can be of little use in these billows—but as children, when tired with crying, sink placidly to repose—we, when exhausted with struggling, shall die the easier....»
[336]: «Qu'aurais-je connu et écrit si j'avais été un paisible politique mercantile ou un lord d'antichambre? Un homme doit voyager et se jeter dans le tourbillon, sinon ce n'est pas vivre.» Moore, III, 429.
They coldly laughed,—and laid him there:
The flat and turfless earth above
The being we so much did love;
His empty chain above it leant....
.... He faded............
.......... with all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray.....