Newstead Abbey fell out badly. In 1808, Lord Grey left at the end of his lease and Byron returned to live at Newstead and began extensive and expensive renovations. His works were mainly decorative, however, rather than structural, so that rain and damp obscured his changes within just a few years. Byron had a beloved Newfoundland dog named Boatswain, who died of rabies in 1808. Boatswain was buried at Newstead Abbey and has a monument larger than his master's. The inscription, from Byron's poem "Epitaph to a Dog", has become one of his best-known works: Near this Spot Are deposited the Remains
Newfoundland and Labrador late-Romantic lyrical sensibility. The collection has humorous and sympathetic portraits of Newfoundland characters, and creates an elegiac mood in poems concerning sea tragedies or Great War losses. With illustrations by Group of Seven member Frederick Varley, "Newfoundland Verse" proved to be Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He went on to publish 18 more books of poetry in his lifetime. "Recognition came with the narrative poems "The Witches’ Brew" (1925), "Titans" (1926), and "The Roosevelt and the Antinoe" (1930), and though he published a substantial body of lyric verse, it is as a narrative poet that Pratt is remembered." Pratt's poetry "frequently reflects