Date: 1816

"[H]e can tell / Why Thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife / With airy images, and shapes which dwell / Still unimpaired, though old, in the Soul's haunted cell."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"Yet must I think less wildly:--I have thought / Too long and darkly, till my brain became, / In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, / A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"[Y]ears steal / Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"He would not yield dominion of his mind / To Spirits against whom his own rebelled."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne, / Their admiration thy best weapon shone."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"[T]here is a fire / And motion of the Soul which will not dwell / In its own narrow being, but aspire / Beyond the fitting medium of desire; / And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"Conquerors and Kings, / Founders of sects and systems, to whom add / Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things / Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, / And are themselves the fools to those they fool."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"One breast laid open were a school / Which would unteach Mankind the lust to shine or rule:"

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"And there they [i.e., "chiefless castles"] stand, as stands a lofty mind, / Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd, / All tenantless, save to the crannying Wind, / Or holding dark communion with the Cloud."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields, / With emblems well devised by amorous pride, / Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)