Selected Poems

by Lord Byron

by age twenty-five Byron had entered the public imagination in the language of Byromania

He was the epitome of mysterious glamour and also a commodity opportunistically manufactured by his publisher, the celebrity machinery of the newspapers, reviews, magazines and caricaturists, and his own eye for the dramatic.

Now, if I know myself, I should say, that I have no character at all… I am so changeable, being every thing by turns and nothing long.

My epitaph shall be my name alone: If that with honour fail to crown my clay, 10 Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember’d, or with that forgot.

But he who seeks the flowers of truth, 20 Must quit the garden for the field.

I dare say they will succeed better in condemning my scribblings, than in mending their own. But

Imbecility may be pitied, or, at worst, laughed at and forgotten; perverted powers demand the most decided reprehension. No

We are the fools of time and terror: Days 165 Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live, Loathing our life and dreading still to die.