Lord Byron
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George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, was a British poet and peer. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest of English poets. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular. |
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| wikipedia:: Lord Byron |
Excerpts
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;"
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more."
"Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine."
"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad."
"The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain."
"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
"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 and of every nation;
Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk
Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:
But to return—Get very drunk; and when
You wake with headache—you shall see what then."
"I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee,
Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued."
From "The Prisoner of Chillon":
"Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned—
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind."