Raquel Jordá Bresó 17 – XI – 05
TO A LADY
Who presented to the author a lock of hair braided
with his own, and appointed a night in December to meet him in the garden.
01 These locks, which fondly thus
entwine,
In firmer chains our hearts confine,
Than all th' unmeaning
protestations
Which swell with nonsense, love orations.
05 Our love is fixed, I think we've prov'd it;
Nor time, nor place, nor art have mov'd
it;
Then wherefore should we sigh and whine,
With groundless jealousy repine;
With silly whims, and fancies frantic,
10 Merely to make our love romantic?
Why should you weep, like Lydia Languish,
And fret with self-created
anguish?
Or doom the lover you have chosen,
On winter nights to sigh half frozen;
15 In leafless shades, to sue for pardon,
Only because the scene's a garden?
For gardens seem, by one consent,
(Since Shakespeare set the precedent;
Since Juliet first declar'd her passion)
20 To form the place of assignation.
Oh! would some modern muse
inspire,
And set her by a sea-coal fire;
Or had the Bard at Christmas written,
And laid the scene of love in
25 He, surely, in commiseration,
Had chang'd the place of
declaration.
In
Warm nights are proper for reflection;
But here our climate is so
rigid,
30 That love itself, is rather frigid:
Think on our chilly situation,
And curb this rage for imitation.
Then let us meet, as oft we've done,
Beneath the influence of the sun;
35 Or, if at midnight I must meet you,
Within your mansion let me greet you:
There, we can love for hours together,
Much better, in such snowy weather,
Than plac'd in all th' Arcadian groves,
40 That ever witnessed rural loves;
Then, if my passion fail to please,
Next night I'll be content to freeze;
No more I'll give a loose to laughter,
But curse my fate, for ever after.
(From Fugitive Pieces
1806, Lord George Gordon Byron)
ANALYSIS
Title ŕ
To a Lady refers to a real
woman as the receiver of the poem’s content.
Lord Byron’s aim in this poem is to tell the lady to meet in her mansion
instead of meeting in the garden because of the weather. It is a response to
the Lady’s appointment explained in the quotation under the title.
The author starts the poem referring to the Lady’s lock of hair, meaning that
it ties up their love and ‘fixes’ it (L5) and that their love is
absolutely ‘proved’ (L5), also sexually speaking, as you can see in
lines 7 and 10.
However, the poet asks the Lady about the
chosen place as a way to make her see that it is not necessary to meet there.
They can find a better place, a warm one where no ‘weep’ (L11), no ‘anguish’
(l12), no ‘pardon’ (L15) is required.
Even more, on one hand, from lines 17 to 28, by
pointing to ‘the Bard’ (L23) - William Shakespeare - and
specially, to the most important love play of Shakespeare - Romeo and
Juliet – Lord Byron is enhancing their own love to an idyllic one. But, on
the other hand, we can understand this appointment to Shakespeare as an ironic
and despised description of
By putting ‘But’ at line 29, Lord Byron
is making his lovely lady see that their situation is not Romeo and Juliet’s
situation, because ‘our climate is so rigid’ (L29) and ‘chilly’
(L31), this last meaning that, perhaps, what they call love is only sex.
But the real statement that gives the
conclusion is in line 32, where the poet clearly encourages her to stop her
idyllic image to imitate Romeo and Juliet love story. Moreover, in the next two
lines – from line 33 to line 34 -, Lord Byron uses the verb ‘let’ + the
pronoun ‘us’, always referring to the Lady, to definitely, but also
softly, tell her to meet as often as they’ve done (L33), ‘beneath the
influence of the sun’ (L34), not at night as the Lady suggests.
Lord Byron, as a romantic poet, always pleased
with love and lovers, perfectly gets out of this little awful situation, and
also tries to persuade the lady to meet at her mansion through the last 10
verse lines, by starting with ‘Or’ very well placed, as introducing a
suggestion, which continues with the very main lady’s aim: to meet at midnight.
So now Lord Byron bewitches her talking about
making love endlessly (L37) inside the mayor house as the cold winter weather
requires it; it is better than in the frozen grove (L39) as ‘rural lovers’
do (L40).
Finally, in the last four verse lines, the poet
promises the Lady that if his passion pleasures her (L41) he wouldn’t mind
coming back once again through the freezing weather to make her happy one more time.
In To a Lady Lord Byron is who always
speaks; it’s his own love experience, a biographical poem, and it shows how his
love affair was.
Byron tells us his feelings with a very common
but also ironic sense, since he is trying to convince the Lady to realize that
it is not June 1st in
Some interesting details we can find in the
poem are the reference to an unknown woman called Lydia Languish (L11),
who, as we can deduce from the text, should always be crying; also the image
Byron makes of the braided lock of hair and the way their love is tied up,
which personally I find very beautiful. But, most of all, I find interesting
the way Lord Byron denotes their sexual meetings with words such as ‘sigh’
and ‘whine’ (L7), ‘repine’ (L8), ‘fancies frantic’ (L8), ‘silly
whines’ (L9), ‘sigh half frozen’ (L14) and ‘if my passion fail to
pleasure’ (L41).
I found the form of the poem a little strange
because it is written as a letter, or it seems so, not being separated by
different stanzas. The structure scheme is the simple one: couplets – aa bb cc … - which do rhyme in
dissonance – entwine/confine; frantic/romantic…
PERSONAL OPINION
From my point of view, I find this a very
interesting, funny and fine poem in which Lord Byron shows many of his faces:
of a lover, an intelligent man, also ironic and above all knows how to make a
woman fall on his arms, with such delightful words.
By reading this poem I found myself at the same
time both delighted with the way he writes and loved, as a woman, receiver of
the poem.
I think this is a good poem to exemplify a part
of Lord Byron’s life and because of this I find it also historically
interesting.