Lord Byron Quotes

You are the fools, not I — for I did dwell With a deep thought, and with a softened eye, On that Old Sexton's natural homily, In which there was Obscurity and Fame, The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.

She loved her lord or thought so, but that love Cost her an effort, which is a sad toil, The stone of Sisyphus, if once we move Our feelings ‘gainst the nature of the soil. She had nothing to complain of or reprove, No bickerings, no connubial turmoil; Their union was a model to behold, Serene and noble, conjugal, but cold.

Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess
The might, the majesty of loveliness?

Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase,
And marvel men should quit their easy chair,
The toilsome way, and long, long leagues to trace,
Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain air,
And life that bloated Ease can never hope to share.

Tomorrow would have given him all,
Repaid his pangs, repair’d his fall:
Tomorrow would have been the first
Of days no more deplored or crust,
But bright, and long, and beckoning years, Seen dazzling through the mist of tears,
Guerdon of many a painful hour;
Tomorrow would have given him power
To rule, to shine, to smite, to save — And must it dawn upon his grave?

The spell is broke; the charm is flown!
Thus is it with life’s fitful fever:
We madly smile when we should groan:
Delirium is our best deceiver.

Each lucid interval of thought
Recalls the woes of Nature’s charter;
And he that acts as wise men ought,
But lives, as saints have died, a martyr.

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?

Time! On whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die

They accuse me — Me — the present writer of
The present poem — of — I know not what, — A tendency to under-rate and scoff
At human power and virtue, and all that;
And this they say in language rather rough.
Good God! I wonder what they would be at!
I say no more than has been said in Dante's
Verse, and by Solomon and by Cervantes;

By Swift, by Machiavel, by Rochefoucault;
By Fenelon, by Luther and by Plato;
By Tillotson, and Wesley, and Rousseau,
Who knew this life was not worth a potato.
'Tis not their fault, nor mine, if this be so — For my part, I pretend not to be Cato,
Nor even Diogenes. — We live and die,
But which is best, you know no more than I.

When people say, 'I've told you fifty times',
They mean to scold, and very often do;
When poets say, 'I've written fifty rhymes',
They make you dread that they'll recite them too

Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!

Away! we know that tears are vain,
That Death nor heeds nor hears distress:
Will this unteach us to complain?
Or make one mourner weep the less?
And thou — who tell’st me to forget,
Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.

Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you seem, but always what you see.

The English winter - ending in July to recommence in August

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!