XCVI. Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved! How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past, And clings to thoughts now better far removed! But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.[ge] All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast; The Parent, Friend, and now the more than Friend: Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,[201] And grief with grief continuing still to blend, Hath snatched the little joy that Life had yet to lend. XCVII. Then must I plunge again into the crowd, And follow all that Peace disdains to seek? Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud, False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek, To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak; Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer, To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique: Smiles form the channel of a future tear, Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer. XCVIII. What is the worst of woes that wait on Age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from Life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now. Before the Chastener humbly let me bow, O'er Hearts divided and o'er Hopes destroyed: Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow, Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed,[gf] And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloyed. * * * * * [Note.--The MS. closes with stanza xcii. Stanzas xciii.-xcviii. were added after _Childe Harold_ was in the press. Byron sent them to Dallas, October 11, 1811, and, apparently, on the same day composed the _Epistle to a Friend_ (F. Hodgson) _in answer to some lines exhorting the Author to be cheerful, and to "Banish Care,"_ and the first poem _To Thyrza_ ("Without a stone to mark the Spot"). "I have sent," he writes, "two or three additional stanzas for both '_Fyttes_.' I have been again shocked with a _death_, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered." In one respect he would no longer disclaim identity with Childe Harold. "Death had deprived him of his nearest connections." He had seen his friends "around him fall like leaves in wintry weather." He felt "like one deserted;" and in the "dusky shadow" of that early desolation he was destined to walk till his life's end. It is not without cause when "a man of great spirit grows melancholy."