On Passion


The Tempest
By Giorgione

(Byron’s Favourite Painting)


—If I could explain
at length
the real causes

which have contributed
to increase
this perhaps
natural
temperament of mine

— this Melancholy
which hath made me a bye-word

— nobody would wonder

— — but this is impossible without doing much mischief

— — I do not know what other men’s lives have been
— but I cannot conceive anything more strange
than some of the earlier parts of mine

— — I have written my memoirs
— but omitted all the really
consequential & important
parts

— from deference to the dead —
to the living
— and to those who must be both —

Sometimes I think I should have written
the whole
— as a
lesson

— but it might have proved a lesson to be
learnt
— rather than
avoided

— for passion is
a whirlpool,

which is not to be viewed nearly
without attraction
from it’s
Vortex — —

I must not go on with these reflections

— or I shall be letting out some secret or another
— to paralyze posterity


ON VIOLENCE

Byron in
Military Uniform

ON IMMORTALITY

Newstead Abbey

ON PASSION

The Tempest
by Giorgione