It was the time of the “Holy Alliance,” and the few men who cared for freedom were living in exile or hiding from the police. Byron associated with these revolutionists, and gave them both money and his name. He became a neighbor of Shelley’s, and again immersed himself in politics and literature. He wrote his drama “Cain,” in which he deals with the problems of human fate from the revolutionary point of view. To the religionists of the time, this was most awful blasphemy; the poet Southey frothed at the mouth, and wrote his “Vision of Judgment,” portraying the damnation of Byron. His angry lordship came back with a poem of the same name--so effective that the publisher was jailed for six months! One stanza, describing the poet laureate, will serve for a sample of Byron’s fighting mood: He had written praises of a regicide; He had written praises of all kings whatever; He had written for republics far and wide, And then against them bitterer than ever: For pantisocracy he once had cried Aloud, a scheme less moral than ’twas clever; Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin-- Had turned his coat--and would have turned his skin. Byron had now become the voice of liberty against reaction throughout Europe. And this was a brand new thing, seeming a kind of insanity to the Tories. There had been an abundance of dissipated lords, but never before a lord of revolt! Byron joined the secret society of the Carbonari, and took part in their attempt to free Italy. When they failed, he was not discouraged, but wrote: “There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end.” In those words we know the voice of a thinker and a man. He was now thirty-five years of age, restless, tormented by a sense of futility. The Greek people were carrying on a war for liberation against the Turks, and Byron went to help them, and thus set a crown upon his life. He died of a fever, early in the campaign; and so today, when we think of him, we think not merely of a nobleman and a poet, but of a man who laid down wealth and fame and worldly position for the greatest of all human ideals.