Verse

George Gordon, Lord Byron:

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Canto IV

CLXXVII

Oh! that the desert was my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements!- is whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted - can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.