Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Honourable Lord Byron: With Anecdotes of Some of His Contemporaries

Front Cover
Henry Colburn and Company, 1822 - Poets, English - 428 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 288 - Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned Eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche — the thunderbolt of snow ! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gather around these summits, as to show How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.
Page 279 - 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 consign'd — To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom — Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Page 312 - The moon is up, and yet it is not night; Sunset divides the sky with her; a sea Of glory streams along the Alpine height Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free From clouds, but of all colours seems to be, — Melted to one vast Iris of the West, — Where the Day joins the past Eternity, While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest Floats through the azure air — an island of the blest!
Page 319 - I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin, With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, That not a single accent seems uncouth, Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural, Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.
Page 229 - ... little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
Page 185 - The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, And cried through the lattice, 'Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?
Page 301 - She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings, The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind To comprehend the universe : nor these Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine, Pity, and smiles, and tears — which I had not; And tenderness — but that I had for her; Humility — and that I never had. Her faults were mine — her virtues were her own — I loved her, and destroy'd her ! Witch.
Page 289 - 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...
Page 294 - Yet must I think less wildly:— I have thought Too long and darkly; till my brain became, In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame: And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, My springs of life were poisoned.
Page 305 - Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome ; The trees which grew along the broken arches Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar The watchdog bay'd beyond the Tiber ; and More near from out the Caesars...

Bibliographic information