Lord Byron

I want a hero: an uncommon want, When every year and month sends forth a new one,

Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.

He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress⁠—or a nunnery.

Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare, And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all, Is first and passionate Love⁠—it stands alone,

My greatest grief is that I leave No thing that claims a tear.

A lad of sixteen causing a divorce Puzzled his tutors very much, of course.

A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.

A long, long kiss, a kiss of Youth, and Love,

Ah, monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar, Not in the toils of Glory would ye fret; The hoarse dull drum would sleep, and Man be happy yet.

Romances paint at full length people’s wooings, But only give a bust of marriages;

But Passion raves itself to rest, or flies;

Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end;

Smile on—nor venture to unmask Man's heart, and view the hell that's there.

But after being fired at once or twice, The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice.

'All that we know is, nothing can be known.'

Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.

And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, the zest of both destroys.

Nought’s more sublime than energetic bile,

Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.