Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)

Mr. Cypress’s Song in Ridicule of Lord Byron (from Nightmare Abbey)

THERE is a fever of the spirit,

The brand of Cain’s unresting doom,

Which in the lone dark souls that bear it

Glows like the lamp in Tullia’s tomb:

Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire

Burns, blasts, consumes its cell, the heart,

Till, one by one, hope, joy, desire,

Like dreams of shadowy smoke depart.

When hope, love, like itself, are only

Dust—spectral memories—dead and cold—

The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,

Like that undying lamp of old:

And by that dreary illumination,

Till time its clay-built home has rent,

Thought broods on feeling’s desolation—

The soul is its own monument.