Whatever weal or woe betide,
By thy command I rise or fall,
In thy protection I confide.

If, when this dust to dust's restored,
My soul shall float on airy wing,
How shall thy glorious name adored
Inspire her feeble voice to sing!

But, if this fleeting spirit share
With clay the grave's eternal bed,
While life yet throbs I raise my prayer,
Though doom'd no more to quit the dead.

To Thee I breathe my humble strain,
Grateful for all thy mercies past,
And hope, my God, to thee again
This erring life may fly at last.

_December 29, 1806._ [First published, 1830.]

As much may be said of another poem which he likewise wrote in his
youth; when, very dangerously ill, and believing his last end to be
near, he turned all his thoughts to the other world, and conceived the
touching poem which ended in the lines:--

"Forget this world, my restless sprite;
Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heaven;
There must thou soon direct thy flight
If errors are forgiven."

But if Lord Byron did not adopt Locke's philosophy he at least paid the
greatest tribute of regard to his goodness by following ever more
closely his best precept, which is to the effect that to love truth for
the sake of truth is an essential part of human perfection in this
world, and the fertile soil on which is sown the seed of every virtue.

While his mind thus wavered between a thousand contradictory opinions,
and, finding part of the truth only in every philosophical system which
he examined, but not the whole truth--which was what his soul thirsted
for; calling himself at times skeptic, because he hesitated in adhering
to one school, in consequence of the numerous errors and inconsistencies
common to all (the great school which has, to the honor of France,
harmonized them all, was not yet open); but not losing sight of the
great eternal truths of which he felt inwardly the proofs, he made the
acquaintance of a young man who had just completed his university
education with great success. This young man, who exercised a great
influence over all his fellow-students, owing to his superior intellect,
influenced Byron in a similar manner. Bold, logical, inflexible, he was
not swayed by the dangers which the sensualistic teaching presented to
all logical minds; dangers which had frightened the chief of that school
himself, and who, in wishing to oppose them, had not been able to do so
except by contradicti