In Chapter 1 of A Tangled Web, Aunt Becky’s heirloom jug is described:

It was an enormous, pot-bellied thing of a type that had been popular in pre-Victorian days. George the Fourth had been king when the old Dark jug came into being. Half its nose was gone and a violent crack extended around its middle. The decorations consisted of pink-gilt scrolls, green and brown leaves and red and blue roses. On one side was a picture of two convivial tars, backed with the British Ensign and the Union Jack, who had evidently been imbibing deeply of the cup which cheers and inebriates, and who were expressing the feelings of their inmost hearts in singing the verse printed above them:

Thus smiling at peril at sea or on shore
We’ll box the old compass right cheerly,
Pass the grog, boys, about, with a song or two more,
Then we’ll drink to the girls we love dearly.

On the opposite side the designer of the jug, whose strong point had not been spelling, had filled in the vacant place with a pathetic verse from Byron:

The man is doomed to sail
With the blast of the gale
Through billows attalantic to steer.
As he bends o’er the wave
Which may soon be his grave
He remembers his home with a tear.

The Tear
by Lord Byron

When Friendship or Love
Our sympathies move;
When Truth, in a glance, should appear,
The lips may beguile,
With a dimple or smile,
But the test of affection’s a Tear:

Too oft is a smile
But the hypocrite’s wile,
To mask detestation, or fear;
Give me the soft sigh,
Whilst the soultelling eye
Is dimm’d, for a time, with a Tear:

Mild Charity’s glow,
To us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
Compassion will melt,
Where this virtue is felt,
And its dew is diffused in a Tear:

The man, doom’d to sail
With the blast of the gale,
Through billows Atlantic to steer,
As he bends o’er the wave
Which may soon be his grave,
The green sparkles bright with a Tear;

The Soldier braves death
For a fanciful wreath
In Glory’s romantic career;
But he raises the foe
When in battle laid low,
And bathes every wound with a Tear.

If, with high-bounding pride,
He return to his bride!
Renouncing the gore-crimson’d spear;
All his toils are repaid
When, embracing the maid,
From her eyelid he kisses the Tear.

Sweet scene of my youth!
Seat of Friendship and Truth,
Where Love chas’d each fast-fleeting year
Loth to leave thee, I mourn’d,
For a last look I turn’d,
But thy spire was scarce seen through a Tear:

Though my vows I can pour,
To my Mary no more,
My Mary, to Love once so dear,
In the shade of her bow’r,
I remember the hour,
She rewarded those vows with a Tear.

By another possest,
May she live ever blest!
Her name still my heart must revere:
With a sigh I resign,
What I once thought was mine,
And forgive her deceit with a Tear.

Ye friends of my heart,
Ere from you I depart,
This hope to my breast is most near:
If again we shall meet,
In this rural retreat,
May we meet, as we part, with a Tear.

When my soul wings her flight
To the regions of night,
And my corse shall recline on its bier;
As ye pass by the tomb,
Where my ashes consume,
Oh! moisten their dust with a Tear.