He tells her that in abandoning him she has left him to love and live in vain. And yet he will not give up the hope of meeting her again some day; this is now his sole consolation. Memory of the past (possibly those meetings which took place by stealth, shortly before his departure from England in 1809) feeds the hope that now sustains him. But he will leave everything to chance, and if fate decides that they shall be parted for ever, then will he sink to sullen apathy. We may remind the reader that at this period (1811) Byron had no belief in any existence after death. 'I will have nothing to do with your immortality,' he writes to Hodgson in September; 'we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another. If men are to live, why die at all? and if they die, why disturb the sweet and sound sleep that "knows no waking"? '"Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque Mors nihil ... quæris quo jaceas post obitum loco? Quo _non_ Nata jacent."' Even when, in later years, Byron somewhat modified the views of his youth, he expressed an opinion that 'A material resurrection seems strange, and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to _revenge_ rather than _correct_ must be _morally wrong_.' It is therefore tolerably certain that, on the day when he expressed a hope that he might meet his lady-love again, the meeting was to have been in _this_ world, and not in that 'land of souls beyond the sable shore.' It must also be remembered that the eighth stanza in the second canto of 'Childe Harold' was substituted for one in which Byron deliberately stated that he did not look for Life, where life may never be. The revise was written to please Dallas, and does not pretend to be a confession of belief in immortality, but merely an admission that, on a subject where 'nothing can be known,' no final decision is possible.