Such scenes as those wherein my life begun—[1]
The earliest—even the only paths for me—[2]
Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be;
The Passions which have torn me would have slept;
I had not suffered, and thou hadst not wept.
XIII.
With false Ambition what had I to do?
Little with Love, and least of all with Fame;
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make—a Name.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
But all is over—I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.
XIV.
And for the future, this world's future may[3]
From me demand but little of my care;
I have outlived myself by many a day;[4]
Having survived so many things that were;
My years have been no slumber, but the prey
- ↑ [Compare—
"He who first met the Highland's swelling blue,
Will love each peak, that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace."The Island, Canto II. stanza xii. lines 9-12.His "friends are mountains." He comes back to them as to a "holier land," where he may find not happiness, but peace.
Moore was inclined to attribute Byron's "love of mountain prospects" in his childhood to the "after-result of his imaginative recollections of that period," but (as Wilson, commenting on Moore, suggests) it is easier to believe that the "high instincts" of the "poetic child" did not wait for association to consecrate the vision (Life, p. 8).]
- ↑
The earliest were the only paths for me.
The earliest were the paths and meant for me.—[MS. erased.] - ↑
Yet could I but expunge from out the book
Of my existence all that was entwined.—[MS. erased.] - ↑
My life has been too long—if in a day
I have survived ——.—[MS. erased.]
