This might be TOO obvious, but Byron's odes to a lost world are composed of rhythm and rhyme. The young George Gordon, with a head full of classical education from Harrow, on the plain of Ilium (P116).
Why should his attention be held by these puny fragments? Because he's seeing with his mind's eye; a mind stacked with classical lore.
We are taught nowadays to believe in some fundamental reality that "they" are searching for. If the contrary is the case, that reality us an imaginative creation of rhythm and rhyme, then the search is a fool's errand. What is there is exactly what Byron records in Don Juan Canto III,
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper- even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his! (88)
Everything else is contained in the poetic imagination. The lost world that Byron searches for is one of physical and psychic strength, and communal glamour.
Whereas scientists search for formulas (numbers) of nano-strands (like angels dancing on pinheads), Byron is searching for strength, beauty, glamour.
One is a collapsed universe of physical boredom (numerical compulsion) attractive to the ego of acolytes if straight line calculation. The other is the physical universe, which is the one he sees in the placid sheep and intrepid tortoise on the Ilium plain.
The physical universe is the decadence that revives from strength; the other is the sterility that cannot revive, the Black Sun of illusion.
Revival has to be a feat of imagination because all things die. Canto III,
And glory long ago has made the sages smile;
'Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind-
Depending more upon the historian's style
Than on the name a person leaves behind.. (90)
In this context, certainties - or facts - may point to the fairly boring reality that materialism is dead matter, while the animating spirit is poetic legend.
Milton's the prince of poets- so we say;
A little heavy, but no less divine:
An independent being in his day-
Learned, pious, temperate in love and wine;
But his life falling into Johnson's way,
We're told this great high priest of all the Nine
Was whipt at college- a harsh sire- odd spouse,
For the first Mrs. Milton left his house. (91)
All these are, certes, entertaining facts,
Like Shakespeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes;
Like Titus' youth, and Caesar's earliest acts;
Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes);
Like Cromwell's pranks- but although truth exacts
These amiable descriptions from the scribes,
As most essential to their hero's story,
They do not much contribute to his glory. (92)
We are supposed to believe that facts exist, but most facts disguise the "fact" that we no longer live in a universe of rhythm and balance. We don't ride horses, horse-and-carts clipp-clipping merrily; we don't weigh the balance of a javelin or spear before launching it at the prey.
More pragmatically, organic farming with all the hands-on work such as scything that entails rhythmic balance, which factory-farming does not.
So, facts are also fictions which don't inhabit the symmetrical world of proportionality - see
Hyborian Bridge 56. The cylical world, as mentioned before, composts human waste so that the material is transformed with grass into sweet-smelling healthy product for the land.
All these products of a rhythmic balance of work and land are signs of strength, of an active life as opposed to a passive existence.
Now, tribal beliefs are associated with such strength - see BWS's Adastra in Africa. Rhythm is strength and the drums sound for the harvest.
The modern mind is driven to believe that facts supply answers, but they don't supply strength, since this is a product of rhythmic balance.
Facts are a drive towards accuracy, precision, certainty, inevitably heading toward the vanishing point of technique. Perspective, speed of calculation in straight-line settings like CERN.
The drive is always towards this same area, such as Musk's Mars rockets (algorithms) and away from rhythmic balance. That's why the more certain the fact the more of s fiction it is!
The world of strength aligns human life with the cosmos, and it could almost be said that, in the world of traditional belief, the legend (story) is stronger than the death.
The question Byron seems to hint at is, can legend conquer death? These questions were posed in Chroniques du Sable (Tales of Faith), a story about an unknown knight who is memorialized by a Saracen.
"How many fallen heroes have disappeared from memory? And to disappear from men's memories is worse than death, it is not existing. No more than a cry of a lost camel in the desert.."
These are the types of things Byron asks; in the universe of strength and belief, things have destiny, rather than being mere material facts.
Stories are things, "words are things". If the universe has a story, as recounted by different belief systems (see DH Lawrence Quetzalcoatl), then the reality is that Man is part of those. This reality has a naïve, poetic simplicity. It is not attracted (by the ego) to the vanishing point of material facts.
The Black Sun of speed and calculation (number). The Black Sun has to be sterile, factual, but the facts gathered are those of physical boredom, which tends to be associated with numerical compulsion.