The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 7/On my Thirty-third Birthday

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1404625The Works of Lord Byron — On my Thirty-third BirthdayGeorge Gordon Byron

ON MY THIRTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY.

January 22, 1821.[1]

Through Life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing—except thirty-three.

[First published, Letters and Journals, 1850, ii. 414.]

  1. ["To-morrow is my birthday—that is to say, at twelve o' the clock, midnight; i.e. in twelve minutes I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!! and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose. * * * It is three minutes past twelve—''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and I am now thirty-three!—

    'Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,
    Labuntur anni;'—

    but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done."—Extracts from a Diary, January 21, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 182.

    In a letter to Moore, dated January 22, 1821, he gives another version—

    "Through Life's road, so dim and dirty,
    I have dragged to three-and-thirty.
    What have these years left to me?
    Nothing—except thirty-three."

    Ibid., p. 229.]