You have asked for a verse,--the request
In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny,
But my Hippocrene was but my breast,
And my feelings (its fountain) are dry.
Were I now as I was, I had sung
What Lawrence has painted so well;
But the strain would expire on my tongue,
And the theme is too soft for my shell.
I am ashes where once I was fire,
And the bard in my bosom is dead;
What I loved I _now_ merely admire,
And my heart is as grey as my head.
My Life is not dated by years--
There are _moments_ which act as a plough,
And there is not a furrow appears
But is deep in my soul as my brow.
Let the young and brilliant aspire
To sing what I gaze on in vain;
For sorrow has torn from my lyre
The string which was worthy the strain.
[2] Though Lord Byron, like most other persons, in writing to
different friends, was some times led to repeat the same
circumstances and thoughts, there is, from the ever ready
fertility of his mind, much less repetition in his
correspondence than in that, perhaps, of any other multifarious
letter-writer; and, in the instance before us, where the same
facts and reflections are, for the second time, introduced, it
is with such new touches, both of thought and expression, as
render them, even a second time, interesting; what is wanting
in the novelty of the matter being made up by the new aspect
given to it.
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