So, we’ll go no more a roving

What the ancient king of Jerusalem would have said, were he an enlightened progressive full of “caring” for the masses, rather than a mere man of wisdom:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all — unless the State, the Divine Fist of Necessity, steppeth in to save the people from these great injustices of time and chance.


If Lord Byron were among us, his famous moment of twenty-nine-year-old reckoning would conclude with a very different intonation:

So, we’ll go no more a roving
   So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
   And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
   And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
   And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
   And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
   By the light of the moon.

When the sheath outlives the blade,
   And the bulk outlasts its heart,
Then the man becomes a shade,
   As life’s bubble meets its dart.

So, his loving’s shrunk to hiding,
   And his night, unending gloom,
Since he gave his life, abiding
   By the tyrant’s kiss of doom.


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