Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break

To separate contemplation, the great whole;

And as the ocean many bays will make,

That ask the eye—so here condense thy soul

To more immediate objects, and control

Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart

Its eloquent proportions, and unroll

In mighty graduations, part by part,

The glory which at once upon thee did not dart.

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:

My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,

And my frame perish even in conquering pain,

But there is that within me which shall tire

Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire:

Something unearthly, which they deem not of,

Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,

Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move

In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love

Few—none—find what they love or could have loved:

Though accident, blind contact, and the strong

Necessity of loving, have removed

Antipathies—but to recur, ere long,

Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;

And Circumstance, that unspiritual god

And miscreator, makes and helps along

Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

Whose touch turns hope to dust—the dust we all have trod.