Byron was a rapid as well as a voluminous writer. His Tales were thrown off at lightning speed, and even his dramas were thought out and worked through with unhesitating energy and rapid achievement. ...

The details of the siege of Ismail in two of the following cantos (i.e. the seventh and eighth) are taken from a French Work, entitled Histoire de la Nouvelle Russie.1 Some of the incidents attributed...

“Difficile est proprie communia dicere.” Hor. Epist. ad Pison. “Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more Cakes and Ale? Yes, by St. Ann; and Ginger shall be hot in the mouth t...

I would to Heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling⁠— Because at least the past were passed away, And for the future⁠—(but I write this reeling, Having got drunk ...

Bob Southey! You’re a poet⁠—Poet-laureate, And representative of all the race; Although ’tis true that you turned out a Tory at Last⁠—yours has lately been a common case; And now, my Epic Renegade! wh...

I want a hero: an uncommon want, When every year and month sends forth a new one, Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant, The age discovers he is not the true one; Of such as these I should not ca...

Oh ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations, Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain, I pray ye flog them upon all occasions⁠— It mends their morals, never mind the pain: The best of mothers a...

Hail, Muse! et cetera.⁠—We left Juan sleeping, Pillowed upon a fair and happy breast, And watched by eyes that never yet knew weeping, And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest To feel the poison t...

Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end; For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, Like Lucifer when hurled from Heaven for ...

When amatory poets sing their loves In liquid lines mellifluously bland, And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves, They little think what mischief is in hand; The greater their success the worse...

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which⁠—taken at the flood,”⁠—you know the rest,512 And most of us have found it now and then: At least we think so, though but few have guessed The moment, till...

O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly Around us ever, rarely to alight? There’s not a meteor in the polar sky Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight. Chill, and chained to cold earth, we lift on...

Oh, blood and thunder! and oh, blood and wounds! These are but vulgar oaths, as you may deem, Too gentle reader! and most shocking sounds:⁠— And so they are; yet thus is Glory’s dream Unriddled, and a...

Oh, Wellington! (or “Villainton”730⁠—for Fame731 Sounds the heroic syllables both ways; France could not even conquer your great name, But punned it down to this facetious phrase⁠— Beating or beaten s...

When Newton saw an apple fall, he found In that slight startle from his contemplation⁠— ’Tis said (for I’ll not answer above ground For any sage’s creed or calculation)⁠— A mode of proving that the Ea...

When Bishop Berkeley said “there was no matter,”858 And proved it⁠—’twas no matter what he said: They say his system ’tis in vain to batter, Too subtle for the airiest human head; And yet who can beli...

Of all the barbarous middle ages, that Which is most barbarous is the middle age Of man! it is⁠—I really scarce know what; But when we hover between fool and sage, And don’t know justly what we would ...

I now mean to be serious;⁠—it is time, Since Laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious; A jest at Vice by Virtue’s called a crime, And critically held as deleterious: Besides, the sad’s a source of th...

If from great Nature’s or our own abyss1062 Of Thought we could but snatch a certainty, Perhaps Mankind might find the path they miss⁠— But then ’t would spoil much good philosophy. One system eats an...

Ah!⁠—What should follow slips from my reflection; Whatever follows ne’ertheless may be As à-propos of Hope or Retrospection, As though the lurking thought had followed free. All present life is but an...

The antique Persians taught three useful things, To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth,1158 This was the mode of Cyrus, best of kings⁠— A mode adopted since by modern youth. Bows have they, ge...

The world is full of orphans: firstly, those Who are so in the strict sense of the phrase; But many a lonely tree the loftier grows Than others crowded in the Forest’s maze⁠— The next are such as are ...

The Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau, author of an Essai sur L’Histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie (Sec. Ed. 3 tom. 1827), was, at one time, resident at Odessa, where he met and made the ac...