[114] {101} ["Stole," apart from its restricted use as an ecclesiastical vestment, is used by Spenser and other poets as an equivalent for any long and loosely flowing robe, but is, perhaps inaccurately, applied to the short cloak (_tribon_), the "habit" of Socrates when he lived, and, after his death, the distinctive dress of the cynics.] [dq] ----_gray flits the Ghost of Power_.--[MS. D. erased.] [dr] ----_whose altars cease to burn_.--[D.] [ds] ----_whose Faith is built on reeds_.--[MS. D. erased.] [115] {102} [Compare Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_, act iii, sc. 1, lines 5-7-- "Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep."] [dt] _Still wilt thou harp_----.--[MS. D. erased.] [du] _Though 'twas a God, as graver records tell_.--[MS. erased.] [116] [The demigods Erechtheus and Theseus "appeared" at Marathon, and fought side by side with Miltiades (Grote's _History of Greece_, iv. 284).] [117] {103} [Compare Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, act v. sc. 1, _passim_.] [118] [Socrates affirmed that true self-knowledge was to know that we know nothing, and in his own case he denied any other knowledge; but "this confession of ignorance was certainly not meant to be a sceptical denial of all knowledge." "The idea of knowledge was to him a boundless field, in the face of which he could not but be ignorant" (_Socrates and the Socratic Schools_, by Dr. E. Zeller, London, 1868, p. 102).] [119] [Stanzas viii. and ix. are not in the MS. The expunged lines (see _var._ i.) carried the Lucretian tenets of the preceding stanza to their logical conclusion. The end is silence, not a reunion with superior souls. But Dallas objected; and it may well be that, in the presence of death, Byron could not "guard his unbelief," or refrain from a renewed questioning of the "Grand Perhaps." Stanza for stanza, the new version is an improvement on the original. (See _Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, p. 169. See, too, letters to Hodgson, September 3 and September 13, 1811: _Letters_, 1898, ii. 18, 34.)] [dv] _Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I_ _Look not for Life, where life may never be:_ _I am no sneerer at thy phantasy;_ _Thou pitiest me, alas! I envy thee,_ _Thou bold Discoverer in an unknown sea_ _Of happy Isles and happier Tenants there;_ _I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee;_[§1] _Still dream of Paradise, thou know'st not where,_[§2] _Which if it be thy sins will never let thee share_.[§3] --[MS. D. erased.]_ [§1] The Sadducees did not believe in the Resurrection.--[MS. D.] [§2] _But look upon a scene that once was fair_.--[Erased.] _Zion's holy hill which thou wouldst fancy fair_.--[Erased.] [§3] _As those, which thou delight'st to rear in upper air_.--[Erased.] _Yet lovs't too well to bid thine erring brother share_.--[D. erased.]