Epistle to Augusta by Lord Byron

My Sister! my sweet Sister! if a nameDearer and purer were, it should be thine.Mountains and seas divide us, but I claimNo tears, but tenderness to answer mine:Go where I will, to me thou art the same--A loved regret which I would not resign.There yet are two things in my destiny,--A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

The first were nothing--had I still the last,It were the haven of my happiness;But other claims and other ties thou hast,And mine is not the wish to make them less.A strange doom is thy father's son's, and pastRecalling, as it lies beyond redress;Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore,--He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

If my inheritance of storms hath beenIn other elements, and on the rocksOf perils, overlooked or unforeseen,I have sustained my share of worldly shocks,The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screenMy errors with defensive paradox;I have been cunning in mine overthrow,The careful pilot of my proper woe.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.My whole life was a contest, since the dayThat gave me being, gave me that which marredThe gift,--a fate, or will, that walked astray;And I at times have found the struggle hard,And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:But now I fain would for a time survive,If but to see what next can well arrive.

Kingdoms and Empires in my little dayI have outlived, and yet I am not old;And when I look on this, the petty sprayOf my own years of trouble, which have rolledLike a wild bay of breakers, melts away:Something--I know not what--does still upholdA spirit of slight patience;--not in vain,Even for its own sake, do we purchase Pain.

Perhaps the workings of defiance stirWithin me--or, perhaps, a cold despairBrought on when ills habitually recur,--Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air,(For even to this may change of soul refer,And with light armour we may learn to bear,)Have taught me a strange quiet, which was notThe chief companion of a calmer lot.

I feel almost at times as I have feltIn happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks,Which do remember me of where I dwelt,Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,Come as of yore upon me, and can meltMy heart with recognition of their looks;And even at moments I could think I seeSome living thing to love--but none like thee.

Here are the Alpine landscapes which createA fund for contemplation;--to admireIs a brief feeling of a trivial date;But something worthier do such scenes inspire:Here to be lonely is not desolate,For much I view which I could most desire,And, above all, a Lake I can beholdLovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

Oh that thou wert but with me!--but I growThe fool of my own wishes, and forgetThe solitude which I have vaunted soHas lost its praise in this but one regret;There may be others which I less may show;--I am not of the plaintive mood, and yetI feel an ebb in my philosophy,And the tide rising in my altered eye.

I did remind thee of our own dear Lake,By the old Hall which may be mine no more.Leman's is fair; but think not I forsakeThe sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:Sad havoc Time must with my memory make,Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;Though, like all things which I have loved, they areResigned for ever, or divided far.

The world is all before me; I but askOf Nature that with which she will comply--It is but in her Summer's sun to bask,To mingle with the quiet of her sky,To see her gentle face without a mask,And never gaze on it with apathy.She was my early friend, and now shall beMy sister--till I look again on thee.

I can reduce all feelings but this one;And that I would not;--for at length I seeSuch scenes as those wherein my life begun--The earliest--even the only paths for me--Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,I had been better than I now can be;The Passions which have torn me would have slept;I had not suffered, and thou hadst not wept.

With false Ambition what had I to do?Little with Love, and least of all with Fame;And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,And made me all which they can make--a Name.Yet this was not the end I did pursue;Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.But all is over--I am one the moreTo baffled millions which have gone before.

And for the future, this world's future mayFrom me demand but little of my care;I have outlived myself by many a day;Having survived so many things that were;My years have been no slumber, but the preyOf ceaseless vigils; for I had the shareOf life which might have filled a century,Before its fourth in time had passed me by.

And for the remnant which may be to comeI am content; and for the past I feelNot thankless,--for within the crowded sumOf struggles, Happiness at times would steal,And for the present, I would not benumbMy feelings farther.--Nor shall I concealThat with all this I still can look around,And worship Nature with a thought profound.

For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heartI know myself secure, as thou in mine;We were and are--I am, even as thou art--Beings who ne'er each other can resign;It is the same, together or apart,From Life's commencement to its slow declineWe are entwined--let Death come slow or fast,The tie which bound the first endures the last!