Works of Lord Byron: With His Letters and Journals, and His Life, Volume 17

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Page 12 - I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow : when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.
Page 12 - ... though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy ; and can therefore take a view of nature, in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones.
Page 12 - When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out...
Page 3 - Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz. that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind...
Page 98 - Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd, Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaint — Strange faces, like to men in masquerade, And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gush'd through grim mouths of granite made, And sparkled into basins, where it spent Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles, Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles.
Page 24 - Has taken for a swan rogue Southey's gander. John Keats, who was kill'd off by one critique, Just as he really promised something great, If not intelligible, without Greek Contrived to talk about the gods of late Much as they might have been supposed to speak. Poor fellow ! His was an untoward fate ; 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.
Page 195 - I will not undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages, and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which...
Page 171 - She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew As seeking not to know it ; silent, lone, As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, And kept her heart serene within its zone.
Page 70 - I pretend to enumerate all he said on the subject ; but it may give you pleasure to hear that it was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners, certainly superior to those of any living gentleman, " This interview was accidental.
Page 35 - What Juan saw and underwent shall be My topic, with of course the due restriction Which is required by proper courtesy : And recollect the work is only fiction ; And that I sing of neither mine nor me, Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction, Will hint allusions never meant.

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