Lord Byron

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make / Their clay creator the vain title take / Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; […]

Jura answers through her misty shroud.

[…] I roam / By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles / Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home; […]

The insect-queen of eastern spring, / O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer / Invites the young pursuer near, / And leads him on from flower to flower / A weary chase and wasted hour.

Not oft to smile descendeth he, / And when he doth 'tis sad to see / That he but mocks at Misery.

And every woe a tear can claim / Except an erring sister's shame.

No solemn, antique gentleman of rhyme, / Who having angled all his life for fame, / And getting but a nibble at a time, / Still fussily keeps fishing on, the same / Small "Triton of the minnows," the sublime / Of mediocrity, the furious tame, […]

Nelson was once Britannia’s god of war, / And still should be so, but the tide is turn’d; / There’s no more to be said of Trafalgar, / ’Tis with our hero quietly inurn’d;

At last, as they more faintly wrestling lay, / Juan contrived to give an awkward blow, / And then his only garment quite gave way; / He fled, like Joseph, leaving it; but there, / I doubt, all likeness ends between the pair.

But now at thirty years my hair is gray— / (I wonder what it will be like at forty? / I thought of a peruke the other day) […]

He left the room for his relinquished sword, / And Julia instant to the closet flew.

[T]ook his place with solemn / Air 'midst the rest, who kept their valiant faces / And levelled weapons still against the glacis.

In all these he was much and deeply read; / But not a page of any thing that's loose, / Or hints continuation of the species, / Was ever suffer'd, lest he should grow vicious.

They reach'd the hotel: forth stream'd from the front door / A tide of well-clad waiters, and around / The mob stood, and as usual several score / Of those pedestrian Paphians who abound / In decent London when the daylight's o'er; / Commodious but immoral, they are found / Useful, like Malthus, in promoting marriage.

Ring for your valet—bid him quickly bring / Some hock and soda-water, then you'll know / […] For not the blest sherbet, sublimed with snow, / […] After long travel, ennui, love, or slaughter, / Vie with that draught of hock and soda-water.