Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 1-84

LXXXIV.

Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng;
But viewed them not with misanthropic hate;
Fain would he now have joined the dance, the song,
But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate?
Nought that he saw his sadness could abate:
Yet once he struggled ’gainst the demon’s sway,
And as in Beauty’s bower he pensive sate,
Poured forth this unpremeditated lay,
To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day.

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
ByronLong