On this Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

‘T is time this heart should be unmoved,

Since others it hath ceased to move:

Yet, though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love !

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone !

The fire that on my bosom preys

Is lone as some volcanic isle;

No torch is kindled at its blaze—

A funeral pile.

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,

The exalted portion of the pain

And power of love, I cannont share,

But wear the chain.

But ‘t is not thus -- ‘t is not here –

Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor

now,

Where glory decks the hero’s bier,

Or binds his brow.

The sword, the banner, and the field,

Glory and Greece, around me see !

The Spartan, borne upon his shield,

Was not more free.

Awake ! (not Greece – she is awake !)

Awake, my spirit ! Think through

whom

Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,

And then strike home !

Tread those reviving passions down,

Unworthy manhood ! – unto thee

Indifferent should the smile or frown

Of beauty be.

If thou regret’st thy youth, why live ?

The land of honourable death

Is here: -- up to the field and give

Away they breath !

Seek out – less often sought than found –

A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;

Then look around, and choose thy ground,

And take thy rest.

Lord Byron

Missolonghi, January 22, 1824.

[Moore relates in the Life that on his last birthday Byron ‘came from his bedroom into the apartment where Colonel Stanhope and some others were assembled and said with a smile, “You were complaining the other day that I never write any poetry now. This is my birthday, and I have just finished something which, I think, is better than what I usually write.”’ -- The pathos and sincerity of the verses are echoed in Mangan’s The Nameless One, though the spirit of the two poems is not the same.]