Date: 1816

"In my youth's summer I did sing of One, / The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind."

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

Date: 1816

"[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

"Since my young days of passion--joy, or pain-- / Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string-- / And both may jar."

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

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)