the hollow cheek,
To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak;
Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer,
To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique:
Smiles form the channel of a future tear,
Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer.

XCVIII.

What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from Life's page,
And be alone on earth, as I am now.
Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,
O'er Hearts divided and o'er Hopes destroyed:
Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,
Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed,[gf]
And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloyed.

* * * * *

[Note.--The MS. closes with stanza xcii. Stanzas xciii.-xcviii. were
added after _Childe Harold_ was in the press. Byron sent them to Dallas,
October 11, 1811, and, apparently, on the same day composed the _Epistle
to a Friend_ (F. Hodgson) _in answer to some lines exhorting the Author
to be cheerful, and to "Banish Care,"_ and the first poem _To Thyrza_
("Without a stone to mark the Spot"). "I have sent," he writes, "two or
three additional stanzas for both '_Fyttes_.' I have been again shocked
with a _death_, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but
'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors'
till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which,
five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as
though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My
friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am
withered." In one respect he would no longer disclaim identity with
Childe Harold. "Death had deprived him of his nearest connections." He
had seen his friends "around him fall like leaves in wintry weather." He
felt "like one deserted;" and in the "dusky shadow" of that early
desolation he was destined to walk till his life's end. It is not
without cause when "a man of great spirit grows melancholy."

In connection with this subject, it may be noted that lines 6 and 7 of
stanza xcv. do not bear out Byron's contention to Dallas (_Letters_,
October 14 and 31, 1811), that in these three _in memoriam_ stanzas
(ix., xcv., xcvi.) he is bewailing an event which took place _after_ he
returned to Newstea