Like to the apples on the Dead Sea’s shore, All ashes to the taste.

Byron invokes the long-standing legend of the “apples of Sodom” (or Dead Sea fruit): outwardly fair, but crumbling to dust or tasting of ashes when bitten. The image crystallizes a Byronic theme—sensual or worldly allure that proves hollow on contact—suggesting that certain pleasures, ambitions, or even ideals can be deceptively beautiful yet spiritually or emotionally barren. The couplet’s force lies in its sensory reversal: what promises sweetness delivers bitterness and ruin, a concise emblem of disillusionment and the gap between appearance and reality.