The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray
And more belov'd existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
--Lord Byron, from Canto IV of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"
The merest sampling, but a stanza that called to me, as it were.
I hadn't realized how much I miss my Byron--with all the wit, the satire, the wild stories, and the heart, the absolute heart--until I finished Dorothy Dunnett's Checkmate, the final novel in the Francis Crawford of Lymond Chronicles, her own oft-maligned, oft-misunderstood, oh so witty, skilled, and wilful Byronic hero.
I'll have to put my copies of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan a bit closer to hand in the evenings.
