"[I]n that Tale I find / The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, / Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind."
— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Date
1816
Metaphor
"[I]n that Tale I find / The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, / Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind."
Metaphor in Context
In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind
Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,
O'er which all heavily the journeying years
Plod the last sands of life,--where not a flower appears.
(p. 864, ll. 19-27)
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind
Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,
O'er which all heavily the journeying years
Plod the last sands of life,--where not a flower appears.
(p. 864, ll. 19-27)
Categories
Provenance
Reading in Perkins. Text taken from HDIS.
Citation
Perkins, David, ed. English Romantic Writers. 2nd ed. Harcourt Brace Publishers, 1995.
Date of Entry
05/27/2008
Date of Review
05/27/2008
