"He who first met the Highland's swelling blue, Will love each peak, that shows a kindred hue, Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace." _The Island_, Canto II. stanza xii. lines 9-12. His "friends are mountains." He comes back to them as to a "holier land," where he may find not happiness, but peace. Moore was inclined to attribute Byron's "love of mountain prospects" in his childhood to the "after-result of his imaginative recollections of that period," but (as Wilson, commenting on Moore, suggests) it is easier to believe that the "high instincts" of the "poetic child" did not wait for association to consecrate the vision (_Life_, p. 8).] [ai] _The earliest were the only paths for me._ _The earliest were the paths and meant for me._--[MS. erased.] [aj] _Yet could I but expunge from out the book_ _Of my existence all that was entwined._--[MS. erased.] [ak] _My life has been too long--if in a day_ _I have survived_----.--[MS. erased.] [90] {62}[Byron often insists on this compression of life into a yet briefer span than even mortality allows. Compare-- "He, who grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life," etc. _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza v. lines 1, 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 218, note 1. Compare, too-- "My life is not dated by years-- There are moments which act as a plough," etc. _Lines to the Countess of Blessington_, stanza 4.] [al] _And for the remnants_----.--[MS.] [am] _Whate'er betide_----.--[MS.] [an] _We have been and we shall be_----.--[MS. erased.]