Their breath is agitation, and their life

a storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,

and yet so nursed and bigotted to strife,

that should their days, surviving perils past,

melt to calm twilight,

they feel overcast with sorrow and supineness,

and so die; even as a flame unfed,

which runs to waste with its own flickering, or a sword

laid by, which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.

George Gordon, Lord Byron