The following verses are full of meaning for the initiated:
'Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells, Lonely and lost to light for evermore, Save when to thine my heart responsive swells, Then trembles into silence as before.
'There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp Burns the slow flame, eternal--but unseen; Which not the darkness of Despair can damp, Though vain its ray as it had never been.
'Remember me--oh! pass not thou my grave Without one thought whose relics there recline: The only pang my bosom dare not brave Must be to find forgetfulness in thine.
'My fondest--faintest--latest accents hear-- Grief for the dead not Virtue can reprove; Then give me all I ever asked--a tear, The first--last--sole reward of so much love!'
Conrad and Medora part, to meet no more in life
'But she is nothing--wherefore is he here?... By the first glance on that still, marble brow-- It was enough--she died--what recked it how? _The love of youth, the hope of better years_, The source of softest wishes, tenderest fears, The only living thing he could not hate, Was reft at once--_and he deserved his fate_, But did not feel it less.'
The blow he feared the most had fallen at last. The only woman whom he loved had withdrawn her society from him, and his heart,
'Formed for softness--warped to wrong, Betrayed too early, and beguiled too long,'
'Yet tempests wear, and lightning cleaves the rock; If such his heart, so shattered it the shock. There grew one flower beneath its rugged brow, Though dark the shade--it sheltered--saved till now. The thunder came--that bolt hath blasted both, The Granite's firmness, and the Lily's growth: The gentle plant hath left no leaf to tell Its tale, but shrunk and withered where it fell; And of its cold protector, blacken round But shivered fragments on the barren ground!'
In moments of deep emotion, even the most reticent of men may sometimes reveal themselves. 'The Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' and 'The Corsair,' formed a trilogy, through which the tragedy of Byron's life swept like a musical theme. Those poems acted like a recording instrument which, by registering his transient moods, was destined ultimately to betray a secret which he had been at so much pains to hide. In 'The Giaour' we see remorse for a crime, which he was at first willing to expiate in sorrow and repentance. In 'The Bride of Abydos' we find him, in an access of madness and passion, proposing to share the fate of his victim, if she will but consent to fly with him. Happily for both, Mary would never have consented to an act of social suicide. In 'The Corsair' we behold his dreams dispelled by the death of his Love and the hope of better years.