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 Panther (poem) der Glieder angespannte Stille –" "und hört im Herzen auf zu sein." </poem> English <poem> "His gaze against the sweeping of the bars" "has grown so weary, it can hold no more." "To him, there seem to be a thousand bars" "and back behind those thousand bars no world." "The soft the supple step and sturdy pace," "that in the smallest of all circles turns," "moves like a dance of strength around a core" "in which a mighty will is standing stunned." "Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides" "up soundlessly — . An image enters then," "goes through the