Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/298

262 Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be

A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,

Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,

And with the sky—the peak—the heaving plain

Of Ocean, or the stars, mingle—and not in vain.

LXXIII.

And thus I am absorbed, and this is life:—

I look upon the peopled desert past,

As on a place of agony and strife,

Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast,

To act and suffer, but remount at last

With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,

Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the Blast

Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,

Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.