The reproaches of lovers are often unjust. Byron either could not, or perhaps _would not_, see that in abandoning him Mary had been actuated by the highest, the purest motives, and that the renunciation must have afforded her deep pain--a sacrifice, not lightly made, for Byron's sake quite as much as for her own. That Byron for a time resented her conduct in this respect is evident from a remark made in a letter to Miss Milbanke, dated November 29, 1813. After saying that he once thought that Mary Chaworth could have made him happy, he added, 'but _subsequent events have proved_ that my expectations might not have been fulfilled had I ever proposed to and received my idol.'[39] What those 'subsequent events' were may be guessed from reproaches which at this period appear among his poems: 'The wholly false the _heart_ despises, And spurns deceiver and deceit; But she who not a thought disguises, Whose love is as sincere as sweet-- When _she_ can change, who loved so truly, It _feels_ what mine has _felt_ so newly.' In the letter written five years after their final separation, Byron again reproaches Mary Chaworth, but this time without a tinge of bitterness: 'My own, we may have been very wrong, but I repent of nothing except that cursed marriage, and your refusing to continue to love me as you had loved me. I can neither forget nor _quite forgive_ you for that precious piece of reformation. But I can never be other than I have been, and whenever I love anything, it is because it reminds me in some way or other of yourself.' 'The Giaour' was begun in May and finished in November, 1813. Those parts which relate to Mary Chaworth were added to that poem in July and August: 'She was a form of Life and Light, That, seen, became a part of sight; And rose, where'er I turned mine eye, The Morning-Star of Memory!' Byron says that, like the bird that sings within the brake, like the swan that swims upon the waters, he can only have one mate. He despises those who sneer at constancy. He does not envy them their fickleness, and regards such heartless men as lower in the scale of creation than the solitary swan. 'Such shame at least was never mine-- Leila! each thought was only thine! My good, _my guilt_, my weal, my woe, My hope on high--my all below. Earth holds no other like to thee, Or, if it doth, in vain for me: ... Thou wert, thou art, The cherished madness of my heart!'