er lean_
_A thought upon such Hope as daily mocks_.--[MS. erased.]

[86] [For Byron's belief in predestination, compare _Childe Harold_,
Canto I. stanza lxxxiii. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 74, note
1.]

[ad] {59}_For to all such may change of soul refer_.--[MS.]

[ae]

_Have hardened me to this--but I can see_
_Things which I still can love--but none like thee_.--[MS. erased.]

[af]

{_Before I had to study far more useless books_.--[MS. erased,]
{_Ere my young mind was fettered down to books_.

[ag] _Some living things_-----.--[MS.]

[87] [Compare--

"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, when we are _least_ alone."

_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xc. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 272]

[88] {60}[For a description of the lake at Newstead, see _Don Juan_,
Canto XIII. stanza lvii.]

[ah] _And think of such things with a childish eye._--[MS.]

[89] {61}[Compare--

"He who first met the Highland's swelling blue,
Will love each peak, that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace."

_The Island_, Canto II. stanza xii. lines 9-12.

His "friends are mountains." He comes back to them as to a "holier
land," where he may find not happiness, but peace.

Moore was inclined to attribute Byron's "love of mountain prospects" in
his childhood to the "after-result of his imaginative recollections of
that period," but (as Wilson, commenting on Moore, suggests) it is
easier to believe that the "high instincts" of the "poetic child" did
not wait for association to consecrate the vision (_Life_, p. 8).]

[ai]

_The earliest were the only paths for me._
_The earliest were the paths and meant for me._--[MS. erased.]

[aj]

_Yet could I but expunge from out the book_
_Of my existence all that was entwined._--[MS. erased.]

[ak]

_My life has been too long--if in a day_
_I have survived_----.--[MS. erased.]

[90] {62}[Byron often insists on this compression of life into a yet
briefer span than even mortality allows. Compare--

"He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life," etc.

_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza v. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical