PoetryA Spirit
Passed Before Me
Churchill's
Grave
Darkness
Epistle to
Augusta
Lines
Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull
Lines
Written Beneath an Elm in the Churchyard of Harrow
Lines, On
Hearing That Lady Byron Was Ill
Oh!
Snatched Away in Beauty's Bloom
On
Chillon
On This Day
I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year
She Walks
in Beauty
So, We'll
Go No More a Roving
Solitude
Stanzas For
Music
Stanzas For
Music, There's Not a Joy the World Can Give
Stanzas To
Augusta
Stanzas To
the Po
Stanzas
Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa
The
Destruction of Sennacherib
To Thomas
Moore
To Thyrza:
And Thou Art Dead
When We Two
Parted
Written
After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos
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Lord George Gordon Byron
Lord
George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was as famous in his
lifetime for his personality cult as for his poetry. He
created the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant,
melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious,
unforgivable event in his past. Byron's influence on European
poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense,
although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his
contemporaries.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the son
of Captain John Byron, and Catherine Gordon. He was born with
a club-foot and became extreme sensitivity about his lameness.
Byron spent his early childhood years in poor surroundings in
Aberdeen, where he was educated until he was ten. After he
inherited the title and property of his great-uncle in 1798,
he went on to Dulwich, Harrow, and Cambridge, where he piled
up debts and aroused alarm with bisexual love affairs. Staying
at Newstead in 1802, he probably first met his half-sister,
Augusta Leigh with whom he was later suspected of having an
incestuous relationship.
In 1807 Byron's first
collection of poetry, Hours Of Idleness appeared. It
received bad reviews. The poet answered his critics with the
satire English Bards And Scotch Reviewersin 1808. Next
year he took his seat in the House of Lords, and set out on
his grand tour, visiting Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece, and
the Aegean. Real poetic success came in 1812 when Byron
published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage (1812-1818). He became an adored character of
London society; he spoke in the House of Lords effectively on
liberal themes, and had a hectic love-affair with Lady
Caroline Lamb. Byron's The Corsair (1814), sold 10,000
copies on the first day of publication. He married Anne
Isabella Milbanke in 1815, and their daughter Ada was born in
the same year. The marriage was unhappy, and they obtained
legal separation next year.
When the rumors started to
rise of his incest and debts were accumulating, Byron left
England in 1816, never to return. He settled in Geneva with
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Claire Clairmont, who
became his mistress. There he wrote the two cantos of
Childe Harold and "The Prisoner Of Chillon". At the end
of the summer Byron continued his travels, spending two years
in Italy. During his years in Italy, Byron wrote Lament Of
Tasso, inspired by his visit in Tasso's cell in Rome,
Mazeppa and started Don Juan, his satiric
masterpiece. While in Ravenna and Pisa, Byron became deeply
interested in drama, and wrote among others The Two
Foscari, Sardanapalaus, Cain, and the
unfinished Heaven And Earth.
After a long
creative period, Byron had come to feel that action was more
important than poetry. He armed a brig, the Hercules, and
sailed to Greece to aid the Greeks, who had risen against
their Ottoman overlords. However, before he saw any serious
military action, Byron contracted a fever from which he died
in Missolonghi on 19 April 1824. Memorial services were held
all over the land. Byron's body was returned to England but
refused by the deans of both Westminster and St Paul's.
Finally Byron's coffin was placed in the family vault at
Hucknall Torkard, near Newstead Abbey in
Nottinghamshire.
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Recent Forum Posts on Lord George Gordon
Byron
A NEW CREATION Keats died
in Rome in 1821 of tuberculosis. Shelley drowned at sea in
1822 and Byron bled to death in Greece in 1823. A brief
incandescent epoch in English literature came to an end while
the candle of Wordsworth burned on for more than two decades.
There was an underside to this intellectual flame, an
underside with scars; the flame burned fiercely and often
people got scorched. -Ron Price with thanks to Paul Johnson,
“Shelley, or the Heartlessness of Ideas”, Intellectuals,
Harper and Rowe, 1988, pp. 28-51. Some great burning, flames
higher, caught the light from a distant fire. Half a world
away in a decadent Qajar state the heat was turned up and the
whole creation was stirred, revolutionized, to its depths,
shaken, divided, separated, scattered, combined and
reunited...disclosing....entities of a new creation.1
Astonishing single-minded- ness, genuine self-revelation-a
rare gift- great bliss and lives filled with pain, suffering
and confusion gave to their poetry and metaphor, steeped in
the activity of living, a force as powerful as religion. Ron
Price 12 October 1996 1 Baha’u’llah, Prayers and Meditations,
USA, 1938, p.295.
Have you read Byron's Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage? Which major poem do you like more?
Heyy Any1 Can some one tell wat
"when we two parted" by lord byron is really about? becz some
say that she left him without tellin him and others say that
she went because she had cheated on another man pleeeese som1
any1 send me an analysis of ur opinion on this poem pleeeese
:confused:
My mother was recently given a book of poems by
Lord Byron from a friend who's wife had passed away and the
friend no longer wanted the book. It appears very very old.
The cover appears to be a somewhat brown leather jacket (soft,
not stiff) and has what appears to be 2 raised feeling flowers
on the cover. We could not locate a printing date anywhere but
the book is very intriguing. Where would I go to find out if
the book has any collective value?
[FONT=Verdana][SIZE=3][COLOR=RoyalBlue]Hi,
please forgive my being uninformed :blush: ...I am familiar
with just a few of Lord Byron's poems; however, I cannot say I
am well-versed with his works...I am trying to find the name
of the work (poem, letter, etc.) from which this excerpt/quote
was taken "the best way would be to avoid each other without
appearing to do so"...thanks in advance for any replies!
:)[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
Alright so as to Don Jaun 'adventures' ... where
does the term come from? is there a book (the idea comes from
hearing the term mentioned by Chekhov's short
story...something or other) or a play (an opera maybe - the
idea comes from hearing the term mentioned in the phantom of
the opera) anyways... enlighten me.
:brickwall I have only ONE week to read
Byron's "Caen" and Milton's "Paradise lost" amd then to
compare the devil from "Paradise lost" and the Lucifer" from
"Caen"... So I have to write an assay- comparison... I need it
to pass a very difficult exam at University Can anybody help
me? PLEASE, I'll be so grateful... I study english but I don't
know it so well to read and understand these two thing in a
week without help... so if you have any good ideas about the
material please
I got trapped in bonds
of comprehension to one poem from Lord Byron. Merely a vague
lineament did I see, so hard for me to translate it...Can you
please give me your understanding of it, especially for the
first two stanzas! Here it is: [FONT=Franklin Gothic
Medium]Youth and Age There’s not a joy the world can give like
that it takes away, When the glow of early thought declines in
feeling’s dull decay; ‘Tis not on youth’s smooth cheek the
blush alone which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart
is gone, ere youth itself be past. Then the few whose spirits
float above the wreck of happiness Are driven o’er the shoals
of guilt or ocean of excess: The Magnet of their course is
gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shiver’d
sail shall never stretch again. Then the mortal coldness of
the soul like death itself comes down; It cannot feel for
others’ woes, it dare not dream its own; That heavy chill has
frozen o’er the fountain of our tear, And though the eye may
sparkle still, ‘tis where the ice appears. Though wit may
flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through
midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest;
‘Tis but as ivy leaves around the ruin’d turret wreathe, All
green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath. O
could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been, Or weep
as I could once have wept o’er many a vanish’d scene,--- As
springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they
be, So midst the wither’d waste of life, those tears would
flow to me! --George G. Byron (1788-1824)[/FONT]
I came to this
site looking for Lord Byron's complete works, and I was
pleased with the aesthetics of the webpage layout. I was very
dismayed, however, to see Lord Byron's complete works were not
online. Where is "Dark Lochnagar"? (I think I'm spelling that
right.) I did a search on a few key words, including
"Albion's," a word in the body of the poem. This amazing poem,
for any lover of 'brave Caledonia' (Scotland,) was put to
music by at least one group, the Corries (Roy Williamson and
Ronnie Brown.) It's my favorite song on their "Compact
Collection." It was very serendipitous one day when I randomly
opened my book of Byron's complete works, and what do I find,
but the poem this song came from! I guess I'll just keep
looking. Also, why has nobody else posted to this Byron forum?
He is, IMO, one of the greatest poets of all time!
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