Poets Poetry

Blake
Byron
Dickison
Jonson
Ralegh
Shelley

Lord Byron

1788-1824

Byron is uniquely distinguished for his personality and life as much as for his poetry.  He is, indeed, widely regarded as a very great poet and especially as a wit and satirist.  Byron was not only a genius but also a millionaire, a hero, a nobleman, a sinner, and a beauty.  Born into a tormented and tempestuous family, he succeeded to the family title when he was ten;  his schooling was at Harrow and Cambridge.  By 1812 he was one of the most famous poets in England.  He married most unhappily in 1815 and in the next year, hounded by accusations of insanity and incest, exiled himself permanently.  Byronism is still with us, as is the Byronic hero: dark, moody, aloof, misanthropic, courageous, brilliant, audacious, tortured.

When We Two Parted 

When we two part
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow--
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me--
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:--
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met--
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With Silence and tears.

Byron was twenty when he wrote these haunting lines. The emotion is definite and powerful even though the dramatis personae are no more pronouns.

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

This lyric, like "The Destruction of Sennacherib" was written for the volume called Hebrew Melodies (1815) with traditional music adapted by Isaac Nathan.  Most things about Byron are fabulously romantic, including the story that he met a lovely cousin by marriage at a ball and wrote She Walks in Beauty" the next morning.

So We'll Go No More a-Roving

So, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
by the light of the moon.

In his earlier poetry, Byron, who was partly Scottish followed the lead of such other Scots as Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott in reviving old ballads and composing new ones--or, as here, of grafting new material onto old.  Regretful decrepitude may seem a fatuous pose in a writer not yet thirty, but Byron had scarcely seven more years to live when he wrote this.

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