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From thy false tears I did distil An essence which had strength to kill; From thy own heart I then did wring The black blood in its blackest spring; From thy own smile I snatched the snake, For there it coiled as in a brake; From thy own lips I drew the charm Which gave all these their chiefest harm: In proving every poison known, I found the strongest was thine own.
By thy cold breast and serpent smile, By thy unfathomed gulfs of guile, By that most seeming virtuous eye, By thy shut soul's hypocrisy, By the perfection of thine art Which passed for human thine own heart, By thy delight in other's pain, And by thy brotherhood of Cain, I call upon thee, and compel Thyself to be thy proper hell!' Again: he represents Manfred as saying to the old abbot, who seeks to bring him to repentance,-- 'Old man, there is no power in holy men, Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast, Nor agony, nor greater than all these, The innate tortures of that deep despair, Which is remorse without the fear of hell, But, all in all sufficient to itself, Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge Upon itself: there is no future pang Can deal that justice on the self-condemned He deals on his own soul.' And when the abbot tells him, 'All this is well; For this will pass away, and be succeeded By an auspicious hope, which shall look up With calm assurance to that blessed place Which all who seek may win, whatever be Their earthly errors,' he answers, 'It is too late.' Then the old abbot soliloquises:-- 'This should have been a noble creature: he Hath all the energy which would have made A goodly frame of glorious elements, Had they been wisely mingled; as it is, It is an awful chaos,--light and darkness, And mind and dust, and passions and pure thoughts, Mixed, and contending without end or order.' The world can easily see, in Moore's Biography, what, after this, was the course of Lord Byron's life; how he went from shame to shame, and dishonour to dishonour, and used the fortune which his wife brought him in the manner described in those private letters which his biographer was left to print.

Moore, indeed, says Byron had made the resolution not to touch his lady's fortune; but adds, that it required more self-command than he possessed to carry out so honourable a purpose.
Lady Byron made but one condition with him.

She had him in her power; and she exacted that the unhappy partner of his sins should not follow him out of England, and that the ruinous intrigue should be given up.

Her inflexibility on this point kept up that enmity which was constantly expressing itself in some publication or other, and which drew her and her private relations with him before the public.
The story of what Lady Byron did with the portion of her fortune which was reserved to her is a record of noble and skilfully administered charities.