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Is it not better, then, to be alone, And love Earth only for its earthly sake? By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake, Which feeds it as a mother who doth make A fair but froward infant her own care, Kissing its cries away as these awake-- Is it not better thus our lives to wear, Than join the crushing crowd, doom'd to inflict or bear? -Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto the Third, 1816 |