Page:The Hundred Best Poems (lyrical) in the English language - second series.djvu/59

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LORD BYRON.

The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow:
And, what were worse, thou canst not see
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

IV.

The better days of life were ours;

The worst can be but mine:
The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,
Shall never more be thine.
The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep;
Nor need I to repine,
That all those charms have passed away
I might have watched through long decay

V.

The flower in ripened bloom unmatched

Must fall the earliest prey;
Though by no hand untimely snatched,
The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it plucked to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.

VI.

I know not if I could have borne

To see thy beauties fade;
The night that followed such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:

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