better than any magic spice or nard, perfume her memory, and keep it
fresh as long as his own has name and breath to live among men.

Mine eyes did ne'er
Fix on a lovely object, nor my mind
Take pleasure in the midst of happy thoughts,
But either she, whom now I have, who now
Divides with me that loved abode, was there,
Or not far off. Where'er my footsteps turned,
Her voice was like a hidden bird that sang.
The thought of her was like a flash of light,
Or an unseen companionship, a breath
Or fragrance independent of the wind.

The perverse pride of Byron, the vices to which he yielded, the bad
things in his writings, the sectarian obloquy which pursued him, have
veiled from popular apprehension some of the sweet and noble
qualities of his heart. Notwithstanding his perverse lower impulses,
he was one of the most princely and magical of the immortal lords of
fame. So far from there being any lack of permanent value and power
in his verse, any falling from his established rank, the most
authoritative critics, more generally today than ever before,
acknowledge him to be the greatest lyric poet that ever lived. One
can hardly help being awed at the thought of the genius and
fascination of the young man whom the gifted and fastidious Shelley
called

The pilgrim of eternity, whose fame
Over his living head, like heaven, is bent--
An early but enduring monument.

Perhaps his better traits nowhere shine out with such steady lustre
as in the constancy of glowing tenderness with which, in all his
wanderings, woes, and glory, he cherished the love of his sister
Augusta, Mrs. Leigh. She remained unalterably attached to him through
the dreadful storm of unpopularity which drove him out of England.
With what convulsive gratitude he appreciated her fond fidelity, he
has expressed with that passionate richness of power which no other
could ever equal. Four of his most splendid poems were composed for
her and addressed to her. In the one beginning, "When all around grew
drear and dark," he says,

When fortune changed, and love fled far,
And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert the solitary star
Which rose, and set not to the last.

The wonderful verses commencing,

Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find,

wring the very soul by their intensity of feeling condensed into
language of such vigor and such m