The Early Grave

Perhaps the early grave

Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, St James Mount, Liverpool, Merseyside, L1

Which men weep over may be meant to save.

From Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1818-1824)

Severndroog Castle

Don Juan had got out on Shooters’ Hill
Sunset the time, the place the same declivity

Severndroog Castle, Shooter's Hill, Greenwich, SE18

Which looks along that vale of good and ill
Where London streets ferment in full activity.

From Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1823)

Under the Volcano

Ah, guilt and sorrow had dogged Juan’s footsteps too, for he was not a Catholic who could rise refreshed from the cold bath of confession.

Mexican Miracle Paintings, Wellcome Collection, Euston, Camden, NW1

Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future.

Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947)

For man, every man, Juan seemed to be telling him, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle upward. What was life but a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn?

Mexican Miracle Paintings, Wellcome Collection, Euston, Camden, NW1

From Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano (1947)