Impromptu, In Reply To A Friend[52]

When, from the heart where Sorrow sits,
Her dusky shadow mounts too high,[70]
And o'er the changing aspect flits,
And clouds the brow, or fills the eye;
Heed not that gloom, which soon shall sink:
My Thoughts their dungeon know too well;
Back to my breast the Wanderers shrink,
And droop within their silent cell.[ce]

September, 1813.
[MS. M. first published, Childe Harold, 1814 (Seventh Edition).]

Footnotes

[52] [Byron forwarded these lines to Moore in a postscript to a letter dated September 27, 1813. "Here's," he writes, "an impromptu for you by a 'person of quality,' written last week, on being reproached for low spirits."—Letters, 1898, ii. 268. They were written at Aston Hall, Rotherham, where he "stayed a week ... and behaved very well—though the lady of the house [Lady F. Wedderburn Webster] is young, and religious, and pretty, and the master is my particular friend."—Letters, 1898, ii. 267.]

[ce] {70} And bleed——.—[MS. M.]