Nor deemed before his little day was done
One blast might chill him into misery.
But long ere scarce a third of his passed by,
Worse than Adversity the Childe befell;
He felt the fulness of Satiety:
Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,
Which seemed to him more lone than Eremite's sad cell.
V.
For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,[1]
Nor made atonement when he did amiss,
Had sighed to many though he loved but one,[2][3]
And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his.
Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss
Had been pollution unto aught so chaste;
Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste,
Nor calm domestic peace had ever deigned to taste.
VI.
And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,[4]
- ↑ For he had on the course too swiftly run.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ Had courted many ——.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ [Mary Chaworth. (Compare "Stanzas to a Lady, on leaving England," passim: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 285.)]
- ↑ —— Childe Burun.—[MS.]
and apocryphal, were told to his discredit (Life of Lord Byron, by Karl Elze, 1872, pp. 5, 6).]
