Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/73

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AND THOU ART DEAD, AS YOUNG AND FAIR.
43

The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,[lower-roman 1]
Shall never more be thine.
The silence of that dreamless sleep[lower-roman 2]
I envy now too much to weep;
Nor need I to repine,
That all those charms have passed away
I might have watched through long decay.


5.

The flower in ripened bloom unmatched
Must fall the earliest prey;[lower-roman 3]
Though by no hand untimely snatched,
The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it plucked to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.


6.

I know not if I could have borne[lower-roman 4]
To see thy beauties fade;
The night that followed such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath passed,[lower-roman 5]
And thou wert lovely to the last;

Extinguished, not decayed;

Variants

  1. The cloud that cheers ——.—[MS.]
  2. The sweetness of that silent deep.—[MS.]
  3. The flower in beauty's bloom unmatched
    Is still the earliest prey.—[MS.]
    The rose by some rude finders snatched,
    Is earliest doomed to fade.—[MS. erased.]
  4. I do not deem I could have borne.—[MS.]
  5. But night and day of thine are passed,
    And thou wert lovely to the last;
    Destroyed ——.—[MS. erased.]