Explore "Stanzas to a Lady, with the Poems of Camoëns" by Lord Byron on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
This votive pledge of fond esteem, / Perhaps, dear girl! for me thou'lt prize; / It sings of Love's enchanting dream, / A theme we never can despise.
Who blames it but the envious fool, / The old and disappointed maid; / Or pupil of the prudish school, / In single sorrow doom'd to fade?
Then read, dear girl! with feeling read, / For thou wilt ne'er be one of those; / To thee in vain I shall not plead / In pity for the poet's woes.
He was in sooth a genuine bard; / His was no faint, fictitious flame.
Like his, may love be thy reward, / But not thy hapless fate the same.