LORD BYRON AND ELIZABETH BROWNING’S LOVE POETRY. The exploration of love and loss in their own unique ways.

1.ROMANTIC AGE AND LORD BYRON.

Romanticism is a period of history between 1780 and 1830. One of the big problems of romantics was the confrontation between the individual against the world. They were dissatisfied with the world, and in literature they try to avoid from it and create a literature far away from misery, poverty, illness, corruption… They create an imaginary literature. The love is a very typical issue in literature, where they explores their feelings, sometimes good feelings but not always, is the case of Lord Byron and his “When we two parted”.

George Gordon Byron, known as Lord Byron was born in London being an English poet in the age of Romanticism considered one of the most versatile and important writers from this era. But his fame was not only in his poems also his extravagant life and his scandalous as his numerous lovers, separations, and accusations of incest with his sister Augusta. He was married with Anna Isabella Milbank, but she felt him a year later in 1816 after give birth to Augusta Ada, his only daughter. He was unfaithful in his marriage. In his last years he went to Greece an Italy where he died because the malaria in Missolinghi.

Many years before his marriage, he wrote “When we two parted” another poem among others dedicated to an affair with a woman. There are many doubts about this poem, its date of publication and who this poem is addresses to. It is said the poem is written for Lady Frances Webster, a married woman who had a secret affair,(not published) with Byron of what he was very fall in love of her.

The publication date of this poem is a mysterious, maybe in 1808, but there are some documents asserting that it was in 1813 but he decided to put, a false date, 1808, to keep the identity of this person, as I have red in an excerpt from a letter to his cousin, Lady Hardy, in 1823, where Byron sais: “…I had the melancholy task of prophesying as much many years ago, in some letters, of which three or four stanzas only were printed and of course without names, or allusions, and with a false date. I send you the concluding stanza which never was printed with the others” “…unpublished lines and a secret into the bargain which you won’t keep”

The poem shared a story of two separated lovers who are broken their relationship, they know that their love time was foretold, and it had the time counted. It is a really sad poem which has the capacity to reach the heart of the reader, also in this actual time, with words of pain, desolation, suffering for the missed of a lover. The decline of the relationship is written in a beautiful way with wonderful words. This was a forbidden love which left a scar in Byron heart. Affairs might satisfy you at the moment, but only at the moment. Byron speaks of this affair sometimes as if she was dead.

WHEN WE TWO PARTED

By George Gordon Byron.

When we two parted

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-

I 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.

Thy 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 the 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.

ANNOTATIONS OF THE POEM.

Line 1: “When we two parted”

The reader knows only with the first line that is a broken-up story, they are not together. We do not know, as readers, why they are not together, maybe because the death, maybe because the love ended. The two lovers before, now are nothing, only words written in a poem.

Line 2: “In silence and tears”

Why silence? It could be because it is a forbidden love and that is the reason why they have to cry in silence. The word” tears” clarify it was a painful lost, they live in tears.

Line 3: “Half-broken heart”

The word “half”, calls the attention, the heart is only half broken. The first four verses are about the end of love between a man and a woman.

Line 4: “To sever for years”

This expression sounds as a feeling of hate, reproach.

Lines 5 and 6: “Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss;”

When they two parted her cheek was pale and cold, but her kisses were much colder. These two lines make to think in the death. It could mean the death or sometimes when you do not feel anything you give cold kisses, without sentiments.

Lines 7 and 8: “Truly that our foretold, sorrow to this”

The time they passed together were counted, were foretold. They knew, there were not a love for the rest of their lives, they only can be together in the shade. But this does not means that they did not want to do it (love forever) because in the next line “Sorrow to this” clarifies that they fell deeply sad for that and for know it.

Lines 9 and 10: “the dew of the morning, Sunk chill on my brow”

“Dew” is a romantic feature, a romantic word, a nature element to express the feelings of the author. What does he want to say in this line? The dew in the morning is cold, sad, some kind of melancholy, loneliness. The metaphorical words of “dew” and “sunk”, are different ways to symbolized the cold.

Lines 11 and 12: “I felt like the warning, of what I feel now”

These verses are very similar to the line number seven. He knew what was going to happen, he knew he could not leave out his feelings behind, he knew he would suffer the love, it was a forbidden love, but they did not do anything to avoid it even they felt the warning.

Lines 13 and 14: “Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame;”

She was married, broken vows refer to broken promises, when you accede to married with somebody you must be faith, and she has broken her promise having an affair with Byron. Her light fame, her luck is that her husband does not know.

Lines 15 and 16: “I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame.”

His tone is shameful; he feels the pain when he hears her name.

Lines 17 and 18: “Thy name thee before me, A knell to mine ear;”

Her name is a knell like a slow sad bell at a funeral death. Sometimes Byron speaks of this affair of this woman as if she was dead.

Lines 19 and 20: “A shudder comes o'er me- Why wert thou so dear?”

When he hears her name, when he knows about her, a shudder comes over him, but why? What power did she have over him?

Lines 21 and 22: “They know not I knew thee, Who knew the too well;-“

The love was totally secret, not even those who know her well knew about this love, because everything occurred on the sly.

Lines 23 and 24: “Long, long shall I rue thee, Too deeply to tell.”

He is regretful for meet her, and is too deeply, sad and sorrowful to express it, maybe because is his obligation to repent of it.

Lines 25, 26, 27 and 28: “In secret we met- In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive.”

He remembers their love encounters and he could not support that her heart, spirit forget their love, short but intensive love. Her spirit can deceive her because it knows this love is wrong.

Lines 29, 30, 31 and 32: “If I should meet thee, After long years, How should I greet thee? - With silence and tears.”

Byron asks to her lover how he should greet her after long years with the desire to see her again but with desolation he answers himself “with silence and tears” after long years, nobody must know this affair. There is a difference between the last line and the second one, even they seem to say the same, the meaning is very different, while the second line the poet remember how their love story ended, in the last verse, he refers to the way of he has to act after many years without see her.

RHYME SCHEME

The poem is written in the first person. Byron uses the iambic pentameter, the structure of the Rhyme is ABABAB, it is divided on four stanzas of eight verses each one. It is easy to understand for people who learn English with easy vocabulary and grammar.

Figures of speech: Alliteration in: When we two parted, line one.

The word “thy” refers to the possessive pronoun of second person singular.

2.VICTORIAN ERA AND ELIZABETH BROWNING.

After Romanticism starts a new era in England called Victorianism. The name refers things and events in the Reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) Througthout the Victorian period the wild, passionate, erotic, even destructive aspects of Romanticism continue in evidence in all the arts.

Studying literature and how this era affects to it, I must say that Victorianism has a lot of artist, poets, writers and a fabulous literature in many senses. Poets in Victorian period were in part some influenced by romantic poets. Before the Victorian era writing was practically limited to male poets, there were vey few famous female poets before, and the Victorian period is the opportunity, the time of many important female writers.

One of major Victorian poets is Elizabeth Barrett Browning remembered for her famous “Sonnets from the Portuguese” and her long poem “Aurora Leigh”, one of the classics of the 19^th century feminist literature.

Elizabeth Browning was born at Coxhoe Hall, near Durman, she grew up in the west of England and she was educated at home by a tutor among other things she larnt many languages quickly. She started to write at the age of fourteen with “the Battle of the Marathon”. The first work of her long career.

In the 1920s she began to suffer a mysterious illness and she was practically an invalid for the rest of her life using her poems to calm the pain.

In 1845 wrote “Sonnets from the Portuguese” a collection of forty-four love poems addresses to her future husband, she married him a year later in 1846. Robert Browning was also a famous poet from the Victorian era; the famous “dramatic monologue” belongs to him.

Firstly she was hesitant, embarrassed to publish them, they were very personal for her and maybe she thought they were not appropriate for the Victorian era. Finally it was her husband who insisted on its publication because for him they were the best sequence of English language poem even written since Shakespeare’s time.

A sonnet is a 14-line poem with a specific rhyme scheme and meter (usually iambic pentameter).Originates in Sicily, Italy in the 13^th century with the word sonnetto (little song). The theme of a sonnet used to be the love.

The most famous poem of this collection is number forty-three “How do I love thee?”. The sonnet shows us a woman in her best role loving and expressing sentiments of love. The poem represents the love in its glory, brilliance, and splendor. She was really felt in love of her husband, she loves purely, and moreover she expects to continue to love him after death, God permitting.

The earliest reactions to the poem, in 1850, were not very favorable. The poetry of the time was much more serious and very different, the Victorian readers considered that the function of a woman was not to write, not to act, not to express their feelings, not to be famous, they were their own functions away from that. These sonnets are probably the most genuinely popular (and critically maligned) sonneteer of this period

It was thank of her biography after her death when changed the perception of Elizabeth Browning’s sonnets as well as her literary career.

C.B. Conant compares Elizabeth’s Browning sonnet’s with “Aurora Leigh”(a novel-poem written by Elizabeth) and Conant describes the sonnets superior to the novel-poem because he sais: “the true story is more interesting than the imagined tale, the sonnets are without competition or doubt, the finest love poems in English language, and afford lessons from which every disappointed unsatisfied heart never unbeliever in the peculiar greatness on womanhood, every one unmindful of its power to solace and support the soul of man may go in peace, hope and the strengthening of faith, (353). This kind of critics are those who carry you to read the sonnets, and appreciate how beautiful are.

It is true for me that when I read this sonnet forty-three I forget that the author belongs to the Victorian period with problem of overpopulation where the nature is destroyed with industrialization and civilization, but Elizabeth and some Victorians seem to ignore it.

The poem forty-three which starts with “How do I love thee?” is composed of fourteen lines telling us the tale of her love story.

HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

Sonnet forty-three

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

ANNOTATIONS OF THE POEM.

Line 1: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”

Elizabeth explores to many ways on how to love her husband and she is going to tell us every of these ways during this sonnet.

Line 2: “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height”

She loves in a broad way; there is no space for the coldness, indifference.

Line 3: “My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight”

The love for him is so intense, she raises the spiritual level. The term “out of sight” maybe she uses it, trying to say that she wants she is trying to find the goal of her life and live uprightly.

Line 4: “For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.”

She eludes to the Divinity, to the Grace, God.

Lines 5 and 6: “I love thee to the level of everyday's, Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.”

She loves him enough to meet all his simple needs (level of everyday’s) during the day (sun) and even during the night (candle-light). She loves him for the good and for the bad.

Lines 7 and 8: “I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.”

In line seven, she clarifies that she loves in the same way that men fight for their freedom and for their Rights. In line eight, she loves in a pure way, without desire of praise. In these two lines she does a comparison first between love and men, who love freedom and fight to obtain it, (the same that she is capable to do), and the other comparison is between love and the purity.

Lines 9, 10 and 11: “I love thee with the passion put to use, In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith, I love thee with a love I seemed to lose”

To love with intensity, she is blinded, she love unconditionally.

Line 12: “With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,”

Saints that were sacred, holy, but she is well-disposed to do it, to do everything, to experiment every ways to obtain his love and his happiness, even she had to lose or to give her most valuable treasure.

Lines 13and 14: Finally the lines starting with “Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death” are the last and I allow myself to say that these two final lines are the best of the entire poem for me. A love carries smiles also tears, and she wants to support everything, and the last line explains that the love for him goes to the death too. Maybe she will love better after her death, where it will not be corrupted and shall be eternal.

FIGURES OF SPEECH

Browning uses the anaphora, (the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses) in eight lines appears the same sentence, “I love thee” except at the end, in the final line in which she uses “I shall but love thee” to emphasized. Thanks of this repetition a rhythm is created while reinforcing the theme. The word “thee” belongs to the accusative and dative singular of “thou” and it refers to the second personal pronoun “you”. With the word “thee” she is referring to her husband, Robert Browning. The word “thee” belongs to the accusative and dative singular of “thou” and it refers to the second person pronoun “you” in English.

Alliteration (repetition of consonants in nearby words) is also dominant in this sonnet, as we can see in:

thee, the (Lines 1, 2, 5, 9, 12). 
thee, they (Line 8) 
soul, sight (Line 3) 
love, level (Line 5) 
quiet, candle-light (Line 6)  
freely, strive, (Line 7) 
purely, Praise (Line 8) 
passion, put (Line 9) 
griefs, faith (Line 10) 
my, my (Line 10) 
love, love (Line 11) 
With, with (Line 12) 
lost, love (Line 12) 
lost, saints (Line 12) 
Smiles, tears (Line 13)
shall, love (Line 14) 
but, better, after (Line 14) 

RHYME SCHEME

Te Rhyme scheme of sonnet forty-three is: lines one to eight ABBA-ABBA and lines nine to fourteen CD, CD, and CD.

3.COMPARISON BETWEEN THEM

In this paper I have decided to start with the Romanticism not because this is anterior to Victorianism, I have decided because understanding this poetry, Romantic poetry, concretely, Byron’s poetry we can understand Elizabeth sonnets, because even these poets belong to different periods their poetry is more similar that opposite in how to express their feelings, openly, purely.

There are many similarities and differences in these two poems. There is a connection in the theme, both poems are based around love but the story is different, and the poems bring out different types of emotions, the true love which exists in present and hopefully will remain forever, the euphoria of being in love, and Byron’s end and forbidden love, in secret, remembered with melancholy and hate. Both are able to get the heart of the reader with honesty. Wonderful words which makes these poems pretty beautiful.

None of them want to publish the poems, the two writers though that they were very personals, it is true that for Byron it would be one more of his numerous scandals to have a love story with a married woman. It was embarrassed for Elizabeth too and she was against its publication, also because the fear of the sonnets acceptance. It could say that they are autobiographical poems, written in different eras but the sonnet as much as Byron’s poem tell the love of their real life.

When we read the sonnet forty-three, “How do I love thee?” We forget that the author of it took part of the Victorian era with problems of overpopulation, the nature is destroyed with industrialization and civilization, but Victorians try to ignore it, also typical of Romanticism. Even love poetry is also used in Victorians poetry it is not as exploited as in Romanticism.

To sum up, they are two poems very similar written from the heart and very red in this time yet, how love and how forget someone. I prefer Byron’s poem because this kind of poem call much more the attention of the reader, I guess, and more if it has a story behind it.

There are not real or strong differences between their poems, however their lives are completely different, she looks a shy woman with an only love, her husband, but he looks very dissatisfied with everything, extravagant and always in love of numerous women and as we can see in his poetry is capable of overflow his feeling which each love he had.

4.BIBLIOGRAPHY.

· · Victorian love poetry. 14 January 2008. http://www.love-poem.co.uk/

· · When we two parted by George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 17 January 2008. http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poem=26659

· · When we two parted, Lord byron. 17 January 2008. http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-WTP-P57.html

· · Essays and papers for students. Cheathouse. 17 January 2008. http://www.cheathouse.com/essay/essay_view.php?p_essay_id=70408

· · Online etymology dictionary. 17 January 2008. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=thee&searchmode=term

· · The poetry online.17 January 2008. http://www.poetry-online.org/byron_when_we_two_parted.htm

· · The Victorian web. 17 January 2008. http://www.victorianweb.org

· · "Lord Byron." Microsoft® Encarta® 2007 [DVD]. Microsoft Corporation, 2006.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. Reservados todos los derechos.

· · Lord’s Byron biography, Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Inc. 17 January 2008. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron

· · Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Inc. 17 January 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnets_from_the_Portuguese

· · The literature Network. Jalic Inc. 17 January 2008. http://www.online-literature.com/byron/

· · Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese. 17 January 2008. http://members.aol.com/ericblomqu/brownine.htm

· · Elizabeth Barrett Browning biography. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Inc. 17 January 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning