Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/279

CANTO III.] And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,

That should their days, surviving perils past,

Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast

With sorrow and supineness, and so die;

Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste

With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,

Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.

XLV.

He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find

The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;

He who surpasses or subdues mankind,

Must look down on the hate of those below.

Though high above the Sun of Glory glow,

And far beneath the Earth and Ocean spread,

Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow

Contending tempests on his naked head,

And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.

XLVI.

Away with these! true Wisdom's world will be

Within its own creation, or in thine,

Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee,

Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine?