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
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