Note 120 — JEUX D'ESPRIT AND MINOR POEMS, 1798-1824.
Reading edition
["To-morrow is my birthday—that is to say, at twelve o' the clock, midnight; i.e. in twelve minutes I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!! and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose. * * * It is three minutes past twelve—''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and I am now thirty-three!—
'Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume, Labuntur anni;'—
but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done."—Extracts from a Diary, January 21, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 182.
In a letter to Moore, dated January 22, 1821, he gives another version—
"Through Life's road, so dim and dirty, I have dragged to three-and-thirty. What have these years left to me? Nothing—except thirty-three."
Ibid., p. 229.]