Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/108

74 Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise:

Pleasure's palled Victim! life-abhorring Gloom

Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom.

LXXXIV.

Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng;

But viewed them not with misanthropic hate:

Fain would he now have joined the dance, the song;

But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate?

Nought that he saw his sadness could abate:

Yet once he straggled 'gainst the Demon's sway,

And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate,

Poured forth his unpremeditated lay,

To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day.