Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!

[Byron In Exile]

This makes the madmen who have made men mad
By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,
And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings
Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule:

 

[Byron In Exile]

Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.

 

[Byron In Exile]

He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Hi Gusty!

Now, what is poetry?

"Poetry is the Devil's wine." — St. Augustine, Contra academicos, c. 387

 

[Georgia Girl]

Good Morning

 

[Byron In Exile]

I this thread.

Hiya, Byronicus!

Hey Foxeen!

How come you're all in black and white?

 

[Gusty Wind]

..........

 

[Byron In Exile]

Good Morning

Morning!

Gee, two 's and I haven't even been snarky yet...!

 

[Georgia Girl]

Morning!

Gee, two 's and I haven't even been snarky yet...!

I believe in preventative medicine

have another

 

[Lorelei_11]

Well, excepting the historical references, it really isn't that anyone is unable to understand it, but that it's a matter of patience. Poetry can't be skimmed, any more than music can be listened to on fast-forward. Nowadays, people haven't much time for long poems, or songs that are more than 3 minutes long.
Well that's pretty neat, thanks! This, and a couple of PM's, have renewed my enthusiasm for this 'harmless wile.' At this point, there's quite a lot about Napoleon, but at the time it was current news. This was written in 1816, and Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo had been in 1815. If I omit anything, I'll include the stanza number. And later, if one wants the unabridged version, there's always the Oxford University Press.

I totally agree, and thats the perfect way to describe it. Listening to music on fast forward would be futile. Its hard for me to understand why anyone would do that, it makes no sense. I guess it is a matter of attitude to begin with as you have mentioned how it is nowadays. I think your right for the most part. I wouldn't have left a comment here about the poetry had I not read the whole thing. If I had read one peice, I would have left a comment on that peice.

I enjoyed reading it and wanted to find out everything. I wanted to understand it all as a whole. I was curious as to what would come next. I'm not a person with a lot of patience. I have changed that through the years. For me its more in terms of getting things done though. How could poetry be skimmed? It defeats the purpose of understanding what the writer means and having any chance of relating or feeling it in your heart.

Its nice of you to put this here for people so that they can have an opportunity to experience something they love or to enjoy something new.

I tend to read poetry that average people have written and I love being able to write my own. Of course I have read the type of poetry you have put here but only while in school. That was a long time ago. I'm actually enjoying it more than I remembered I did all those years ago. I'm 41yrs old now and I think its different for me now because of all of my life experience.

 

[Guest]

 

[Byron In Exile]

LXVII

But these are deeds which should not pass away,
And names that must not wither, though the earth
Forgets her empires with a just decay,
The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth;
The high, the mountain-majesty of worth
Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,
And from its immortality look forth
In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow;
Imperishably pure beyond all things below.

 

[Guest]

 

[Byron In Exile]

Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:
There is too much of man here, to look through
With a fit mind the might which I behold;
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
Thoughts hid, but not less cherish'd than of old,
Ere mingling with the herd had penn'd me in their fold.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Beautiful... and true.

Great thread, Byronicus

 

[Byron In Exile]

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind;
All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil
In the hot throng, where we become the spoil
Of our infection, till too late and long
We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong
'Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.

 

[Byron In Exile]

There, in a moment, we may plunge our years
In fatal penitence, and in the blight
Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,
And colour things to come with hues of Night;
The race of life becomes a hopeless flight
To those that walk in darkness: on the sea,
The boldest steer but where their ports invite,
But there are wanderers o'er Eternity
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Is it not better, then, to be alone,
And love Earth only for its earthly sake?
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
A fair but froward infant her own care,
Kissing its cries away as these awake;—
Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
Than join the crushing crowd, doom'd to inflict or bear?

 

[Byron In Exile]

I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture: I can see
Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

 

[Byron In Exile]

And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life:
I look upon the peopled desert past,
As on a place of agony and strife,
Where, for some sin, to sorrow I was cast,
To act and suffer, but remount at last
With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,
Though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast
Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,
Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.

 

[Byron In Exile]

And when, at length, the mind shall all be free
From what it hates in this degraded form,
Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be
Existent happier in the fly and worm,—
When elements to elements conform,
And dust is as it should be, shall I not
Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm?
The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot?
Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?

 

[Byron In Exile]

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion? should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these? and stem
A tide of suffering, rather than forego
Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below,
Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?

 

[Byron In Exile]

LXXXIV

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it; and they who war
With their own hopes, and have been vanquish'd, bear
Silence, but not submission: in his lair
Fix'd Passion holds his breath, until the hour
Which shall atone for years; none need despair:
It came, it cometh, and will come, — the power
To punish or forgive — in one we shall be slower.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,
That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

 

[Byron In Exile]

It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;