The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 1/A Woman's Hair

by George Gordon Byron

[A WOMAN'S HAIR.^[1]]

Oh! little lock of golden hue
In gently waving ringlet curl'd,
By the dear head on which you grew,
I would not lose you for a world.

Not though a thousand more adorn
The polished brow where once you shone,
Like rays which gild a cloudless sky^[2]
Beneath Columbia's fervid zone.

1806.

1. [These lines are preserved in MS. at Newstead, with the following memorandum in Miss Pigot's handwriting: "Copied from the fly-leaf in a vol. of my Burns' books, which is written in pencil by himself." They have hitherto been printed as stanzas 5 and 6 of the lines "To a Lady," etc., p. 212.]
2. —— a cloudless morn.—[Ed. 1832.]