Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/295

CANTO III.] LXIX.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind:

All are not fit with them to stir and toil,

Nor is it discontent to keep the mind

Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil

In the hot throng, where we become the spoil

Of our infection, till too late and long

We may deplore and struggle with the coil,

In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong

Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.

LXX.

There, in a moment, we may plunge our years

In fatal penitence, and in the blight