Full oft may I recall to mind the time When first emotion's sweetest thrill I felt, As on Childe Harold's minstrelsy sublime For many an hour my listless boyhood dwelt. Long years fair Poesy had idly rested, Her harp but trembling to each weaker lay, When thou, with warring elements invested, Shot down, like fire, a dazzling solar ray! What if the madd'ning force of passions high, With transient cloud thy glorious disk o'ercast— Thou rigid moralist, go, bend thine eye On dying Greece — that action was his last! To free the Muses' land — their bower to grace, Still must the name of BYRON hold a deathless place! 1830.
