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
William Knox (Scottish poet) William Knox (Scottish poet) William Knox (17 August 1789–12 November 1825) was a Scottish poet. He is known for writing Abraham Lincoln's favourite poem, "Mortality", which Lincoln often recited by memory. The eldest son of a Thomas Knox, a farmer, and Barbara Turnbull in Lilliesleaf, Roxburghshire, he was educated first in Lilliesleaf then in Musselburgh Grammar School. They lived in a farm (Todrig) which his mother had inherited when her first husband, also a farmer, died. He farmed unsuccessfully from 1812-1817 then turned to writing, supported by both Christopher North and Sir Walter Scott. He wrote several books of poetry,