“If thou regrett’st thy youth, why live? 
The land of honourable death
Is here:—­up to the field, and give

                Away thy breath!

“Seek out—­less often sought than found—­
A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground

                And take thy rest.”

These lines are from Byron’s last poem, written on his thirty-sixth birthday.

Chapter LXXX SHELLEY—­THE POET OF LOVE

WHEN Byron wandered upon the Continent he met and made friends with another poet, a greater than himself.  This poet was called Percy Bysshe Shelley, and of him I am going to tell you something in this chapter.

On the 4th of August, 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, near the village of Warnham, in Sussex.  His father, “a well-meaning, ill-doing, wrong-headed man,” was of a good family, and heir to a baronetcy.  His mother was a beautiful woman.

Of the early childhood of Bysshe we know nothing, except that at the age of six he was daily taught Latin by a clergyman.

When we next hear of him he is a big boy, the hero of the nursery with four little sisters, and a wee, toddling, baby brother, to all of whom he loved to play big brother.  His sisters would often sit on his knee and listen to the wonderful tales he told.  There were stories of the Great Tortoise which lived in a pond near.  True, the Great Tortoise was never seen, but that made it all the more mysterious and wonderful, and any unusual noise was put down to the Great Tortoise.  There were other stories about the Great Old Snake which lived in the garden.  This really was seen, and perhaps it was the same serpent which two hundred years before had been known to lurk about the countryside.  “He could jut out his neck an ell,” it was said, “and cast his venom about four rods; a serpent of countenance very proud, at the sight or hearing of men or cattle, raising his head seeming to listen and look about with great arrogancy.”  But if it was this same serpent it had lost its venom, and in the days when Bysshe and his sisters played about the garden, they looked upon it as a friend.  One day, however, a gardener killed it by mistake, when he was cutting the grass with a scythe.  So there was an end of the Great Old Snake.  But the Tortoise and the Snake were not the only wonderful things about Field Place.  There was a big garret which was never used, with beneath it a secret room, the only entrance to which was through a plank in the garret floor.  This, according to the big brother, was the dwelling-place of an alchemist “old and grey with a long beard.”  Here with his lamp and magic books he wrought his wonders, and “Some day” the eager children were promised a visit to him.  Meanwhile Bysshe himself played the alchemist, and with his sisters dressed up in strange