Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

   Teems not each ditty with the glorious tale? 
   Ah! such, alas, the hero’s amplest fate! 
   When granite moulders and when records fail,
   A peasant’s plaint prolongs his dubious date. 
   Pride! bend thine eye from heaven to thine estate,
   See how the mighty shrink into a song! 
   Can volume, pillar, pile, preserve thee great? 
   Or must thou trust Tradition’s simple tongue,
When Flattery sleeps with thee, and History does thee wrong?