SO, WE’LL GO NO MORE A ROVING…

By George Gordon Byron

 

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 wears out the breast

And the hearth must pause to breathe,

And love itself have rest.

 

Though the night was made for loving,

And the days return too soon,

Yet we’ll go no more a roving

By the light of the moon.

 

This poem is included in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, edited by Thomas Moore in 1830. However, the poem was composed the 28th February 1817.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Analysis of the poem

In my opinion this poem could be written to his love, or even  to a friend explaining his feelings about an impossible love since then, because it express in an impersonal way. There is a “we” in the first verse, referring to him and his love, but it does not give us information to who is this poem send.

I understand the poem as a farewell between the author and his love, may be because of the lovers death. In a way we can think that it is a farewell till another night, but at the end of the last quatrain there is a clear goodbye where I think he is saying goodbye because he will not see her again.

I think that may be he is trying to say that though his love is not there, he will still love her, but not in a deep way as when she was with him, because as he said the heart must pause to breath and love itself have rest, because is difficult love someone without have them.

Information about the poem and the author

“George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an Anglo-Scottish poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Among Lord Byron's best-known works are the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. The latter remained incomplete on his death. He was regarded as one of the greatest European poets and remains widely read.

“Lord Byron's fame rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and allegations of incest and sodomy. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization the Carbonari in its struggle against Austria, and later traveled to fight against the Turks in the Greek War of Independence, for which the Greeks consider him a national hero. He died from a febrile illness in Messolonghi.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_byron)

 

 

As I have said before, this poem was written in 1817 and included in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. This book was edited by Thomas Moore, including letters which were written by Lord Byron to his family and fiends during his travels to the East, and during the time he spent travelling through Italy, Spain, Albania and Athens. This poem specifically was written from Venice, just a few months before had left Belgium, where he stayed the summer in Shelley’s villa. 

This is not one of his most important works, as Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, and so on. However, these letters helped Thomas Moore to write Lord Byron biography.

Lord Byron had homosexual, this and the censure that was in England at that moment made that he moved into other places that I have mention before. In my analysis of the poem, I thought that his love was a woman, but it could be a man. In fact it could be the boy he met in Athens, to who fold in love. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took the information from the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_byron, but I did a summary of the main points