Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

These lines are from Byron’s early narrative poem “The Corsair” (1814), a hugely popular work published during the height of his fame as a leading figure of British Romanticism. In the poem, Byron frequently pauses the action to offer reflective, aphoristic commentary on passion, fate, and mortality—traits that helped make his verse widely quotable. The couplet appears as part of a meditation on human fear of death and the way people mourn it, even though everyday life already contains a recurring “miniature death” in sleep. Byron’s own preoccupation with transience and loss—shaped by turbulent relationships and a restless public life—often surfaces in such philosophical asides.

Byron juxtaposes the cultural terror of death with the ordinary fact of sleep: if we routinely surrender consciousness for hours each day, why does the final surrender provoke such anguish? The phrase “Death, so called” hints that death may be partly a matter of naming and imagination—an idea intensified by the comparison to sleep, traditionally called death’s “brother.” The couplet does not deny grief; rather, it exposes a disproportion between our habitual acceptance of unconsciousness and our dread of its permanence. The effect is both consolatory and skeptical, characteristic of Byron’s tendency to puncture solemn conventions with cool, rational irony.