(Here is a random string of poetical gems:)—­

  So, we’ll go no more a roving
    So late into the night,
  Though the heart be still as loving,
    And the moon be still as bright;
  For the sword out-wears its sheath,
    And the soul wears out the breast,
  And the heart must pause to breathe,
    And Love itself have rest. 
  Though the night was made for loving,
    And the day returns too soon,
  Yet we’ll go no more a roving
    By the light of the moon.

  Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story. 
  The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
  And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
  Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

  What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled? 
  ’Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled. 
  Then away with all such from the head that is hoary! 
  What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?

  Oh, Fame! if I e’er took delight in thy praises,
  ’Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
  Than to see the bright eyes of the dear One discover
  She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.

There chiefly I sought thee—­there only I found thee; Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee; When it sparkled o’er aught that was bright in my story, I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.

TO THE COUNTESS OF B——.

  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,