Note 83 — Chapter X

“There is a dungeon, in whose dim, drear light What do I gaze on?... An old man and a female young and fair, Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein The blood is nectar. Here youth offers to old age the food, The milk of his own gift.... It is her sire To whom she renders back the debt of blood.... Drink, drink and live, old man; heaven’s realm holds no such tide.” “Childe Harold,” iv. st. 148.