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
Epistolary poem separate exchanges of paired epistles, one each from a heroic lover to his absent beloved and from the heroine in return. A number of epistolary poems were published as separate works in England during the so-called "Long Eighteenth Century", i.e., about 1688 - 1815. Examples of epistolary poems include: Epistolary poem An epistolary poem, also called a verse letter or letter poem, is a poem in the form of an epistle or letter. Epistolary poems date at least as early as the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17 or 18 AD), who wrote the "Heroides" ("The Heroines") or "Epistulae