Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/246

206 2.

Fortune! take back these cultur'd lands,

Take back this name of splendid sound!

I hate the touch of servile hands,

I hate the slaves that cringe around:

Place me among the rocks I love,

Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar;

I ask but this—again to rove

Through scenes my youth hath known before.

3.

Few are my years, and yet I feel

The World was ne'er design'd for me:

Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal

The hour when man must cease to be?

Once I beheld a splendid dream,

A visionary scene of bliss;

Truth!—wherefore did thy hated beam

Awake me to a world like this?

4.

I lov'd—but those I lov'd are gone;

Had friends—my early friends are fled:

How cheerless feels the heart alone,

When all its former hopes are dead!

Though gay companions, o'er the bowl

Dispel awhile the sense of ill;

Though Pleasure stirs the maddening soul,

The heart—the heart—is lonely still.