Lord George Gordon Byron
On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year
Missolonghi, Jan. 22, 1824
‘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.
But ’tis not thus -and ’tis not here -
Stanzas To Augusta
When all around grew drear and dark,
And reason half withheld her ray -
And hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;
In that deep midnight of the mind,
And that internal strife of heart,
When dreading to be deemed too kind,
The weak despair -the cold depart;
When fortune changed -and love fled far,
And hatred’s shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert the solitary star
Which rose, and set not to the last.
Oh, blest be thine unbroken light!
That watched me as a seraph’s eye,
And stood between me and the night,
For ever shining sweetly nigh.
Stanzas To the Po
River, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;
What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!
What do I say -a mirror of my heart?
Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?
Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;
And such as thou art were my passions long.
Time may have somewhat tamed them, -not for ever;
