My task is done--my song hath ceased--my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit[qk]
The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
My midnight lamp--and what is writ, is writ,--
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been--and my visions flit
Less palpably before me--and the glow
Which in my Spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been--
A sound which makes us linger;--yet--farewell![ql]
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene[qm]
Which is his last--if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his--if on ye swell
A single recollection--not in vain
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with _him_ alone may rest the pain,
If such there were--with _you_, the Moral of his Strain.[554]

FOOTNOTES:

[363] {319} _MS. D._, Byron's final fair copy, is in the possession
of the Lady Dorchester.

[364] {321} [Compare Canto IV. stanza clxiv.--

"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song....
He is no more--these breathings are his last."]

[365] {322} [His marriage. Compare the epigram, "On my Wedding-Day,"
sent in a letter to Moore, January 2, 1820--

"Here's a happy new year!--but with reason
I beg you'll permit me to say--
Wish me _many_ returns of the _season_,
But as _few_ as you please of the _day_."]

[366] {323} [Some fancy me no Chinese, because I am formed more like a
man than a monster; and others wonder to find one born five thousand
miles from England, endued with common sense.... He must be some
Englishman in disguise."--_The Citizen of the World; or a Series of
Letters from a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friends in the
East_, 1762, Letter xxxiii.]

[367] [_Vide ante_, Introduction to Canto IV., p. 315.]

[368] {324} [Antonio Canova, sculptor, 1757-1822; Vincenzo Monti,
1754-1828; Ugo Foscolo, 1776-1827 (see _Life_, p. 456, etc.); Ippolito
Pindemonte, 1753-1828 (see Letter to Murray, June 4, 1817), poets;
Ennius Quirinus Visconti, 1751-1818, the valuer of the Elgin marbles,
archaeologist; Giacomo Morelli, 1745-1819, bibliographer and scholar (the
architect Cosimo Morelli, born 1732, died in 1812); Leopoldo Conte de
Cicognara, 1767-1834, archaeologist; the Contessa Albrizzi, 1769?-1836,
aut