Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/463

CANTO IV.] CXXIV.

We wither from our youth, we gasp away—

Sick—sick; unfound the boon—unslaked the thirst,

Though to the last, in verge of our decay,

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first—

But all too late,—so are we doubly curst.

Love, Fame, Ambition, Avarice—'tis the same,

Each idle—and all ill—and none the worst—

For all are meteors with a different name,

And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

CXXV.

Few—none—find what they love or could have loved,

Though accident, blind contact, and the strong

Necessity of loving, have removed

Antipathies—but to recur, ere long,

Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;

And Circumstance, that unspiritual God

And Miscreator, makes and helps along

Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

Whose touch turns Hope to dust,—the dust we all have trod.