So, we'll go no more a roving the latter part of it, and sitting up late o' nights--had knocked me up a little. But it is over--and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and sacred music... Though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find 'the sword wearing out the scabbard,' though I have but just turned the corner of twenty nine." The poem seems to have been suggested in part by the refrain of a Scottish song known as "The Jolly Beggar." The Jolly Beggar was published in Herd's "Scots Songs" in 1776, 41 years before Byron's letter, and goes partially
The Tower (poem) The Tower (poem) "The Tower" is a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. It is a passionate indictment of a man wrestling with age. It is the second poem in "The Tower", a 1928 collection of Yeats's poems. "Below appears a small extract from the poem: " <poem> What shall I do with this absurdity – O heart, O troubled heart – this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible – No, not