Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication: Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk The hopes of all men, an… - Lord Byron

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.

XXII. By those, that deepest feel, is ill exprest The indistinctness of the suffering breast; Where thousand thoughts begin to end in one, 1810 Which seeks from all the refuge found in none; No words suffice the secret soul to show, For Truth denies all eloquence to Woe. On Conrad’s stricken soul Exhaustion prest, And Stupor almost lulled it into rest; So feeble now — his mother’s softness crept To those wild eyes, which like an infant’s wept: It was the very weakness of his brain, Which thus confessed without relieving pain. None saw his trickling tears — perchance, if seen, 1820 That useless flood of grief had never been: Nor long they flowed — he dried them to depart, In helpless — hopeless — brokenness of heart: The Sun goes forth, but Conrad’s day is dim: And the night cometh — ne’er to pass from him. There is no darkness like the cloud of mind, On Grief’s vain eye — the blindest of the blind! Which may not — dare not see — but turns aside To blackest shade — nor will endure a guide!

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.

Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.

This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
if inscribed over human Ashes,
is but a just tribute to the Memory of
Boatswain, a Dog
who was born in Newfoundland May 1803
and died at Newstead Nov. 18th, 1808

When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth,
Unknown to Glory, but upheld by Birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below.
When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the Soul he held on earth –
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power –
Who knows thee well, must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy tongue hypocrisy, thy heart deceit!
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye, who behold perchance this simple urn,
Pass on – it honours none you wish to mourn.
To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one — and here he lies.