Don Juan 04-100
Canto the Fourth
 
 C
 
Of poets who come down to us through distance
 Of time and tongues, the foster-babes of Fame,
Life seems the smallest portion of existence;
 Where twenty ages gather o'er a name,
'T is as a snowball which derives assistance
 From every flake, and yet rolls on the same,
Even till an iceberg it may chance to grow;
But, after all, 't is nothing but cold snow.

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824) 
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