Five Poems by Poetry's "Bad Boy," Lord Byron

George Gordon Lord Byron (January 22, 1788 - April 19, 1824) was a British poet whose writings and life made him an important yet polarizing influence within his lifetime and beyond. He was as infamous for his spurned and devoted lovers as he was famous for his mesmerizing poetry and his exuberant embrace of political causes, especially freedom. One of his most high-profile love affairs was with Lady Caroline Lamb (November 13, 1785 - January 26, 1828), who stalked him after their break-up in 1812 and bestowed upon him his well-known epithet as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know."

On January 2, 1815, Lord Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke (May 17, 1792 - May 16, 1860), who matched his polymathic intelligence with her genius for mathematics and science. Nevertheless, their marriage was strained by financial difficulties, temperamental differences, and Lady Caroline Lamb's persistent stalking and slandering. Their daughter, Augusta Ada, was born on December 10, 1815. In mid-January 1816 Anne Isabella and their daughter left for an ostensibly temporary stay in her parents' manor house, Kirkby Mallory Hall in Leicestershire, while Lord Byron arranged their finances.

Anne Isabella's parents were not enamored of their son-in-law, and soon Anne Isabella's affectionate letters turned into a demand for a legal separation. Lord Byron questioned the separation, thinking that Anne Isabella was being pressured by her parents. In response, Anne Isabella affirmed that this was her decision. It also was communicated to Lord Byron that Anne Isabella was convinced that not only was he mentally unstable but also that he had been involved in an incestuous affair with his half-sister, Augusta Byron Leigh (January 26, 1783 - October 12, 1851). Realizing the complete destruction to his half-sister and to himself that would ensue from the mere uttering of the heinous accusation of incest, Lord Byron agreed to a separation, which was legalized in March 1816.

Lord Byron never saw his "princess of parallelograms" nor his daughter again. In April he left England, never to return, except after death. He travelled to Venice's St Lazarus Island (San Lazzaro degli Armeni), which is occupied by the monastic headquarters of the Mekhitarists, an order of Benedictine monks of the Armenian Catholic Church. Lord Byron studied Armenian language and culture at the monastery, which today is considered one of the principal centers of Armenian culture and is highly regarded for publishing ancient Armenian versions of lost ancient Greek texts. Lord Byron is credited with founding the field of Armenology (Armenian studies) through his seminal grammars and translations (including the Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians).

Lord Byron also continued to write his work-in-progress, Don Juan. He finished the epic poem through the sixteenth canto and drafted the unfinished seventeenth canto. Don Juan has towered through the centuries as one of the masterpieces of English literature, lyrically expressing a range of emotions and straddling many disciplines, from culture and history to literature and politics to religion and sociology. It often is ranked alongside Paradise Lost by John Milton (December 9, 1608 - November 8, 1674) as two of the most important English literary works.

On August 4, 1823, Lord Byron arrived on the Ionian island of Kefalonia to support the Greek War of Independence (1821 - 1829) from the Ottoman Empire.

On December 29, Lord Byron arrived in Messolonghi (Μεσολόγγι) in western Greece, where he joined independence leader Alexandros Mavrokordatos (February 11, 1791-August 18, 1865). They were planning an attack on a Turkish-held fortress on the strategic Gulf of Corinth.

Unfortunately, Lord Byron became ill in February, rallied, but then caught a fever and died in Missolonghi on April 19, 1823.

Near the end he passionately declared, "I have given her [Greece] my time, my means, my health, and now I give her my life! What could I do more?"

At the time of Byron's death, one of his many admirers was the young Alfred Lord Tennyson (August 6, 1809 - October 6, 1892). Alfred idolized Lord Byron and imitated the Byronic style in his own early poems. Alfred later remembered the day that he, an impressionable fifteen-year-old at that time, heard of his idol's death:

"Byron was dead! I thought the whole world was at an end. I thought everything was over and finished for every one --- that nothing else mattered. I remember I walked out alone, and carved 'Byron is dead' into the sandstone." [Anne Ritchie, Records of Tennyson Ruskin and Browning]

While it was decided to bring his body back to England for burial, it is believed that his heart was buried in Missolonghi. To this day Lord Byron is regarded as an incomparable hero in Greece. A statue containing his heart was erected in his memory in Messolonghi's Garden of Heroes. The statue has a place of honor between the Polyandrion (a tomb honoring fallen defenders of the town) and Markos Botsaris (Μάρκος Μπότσαρης, c.1788-August 21, 1823), a greatly revered hero in the Greek War of Independence (Ελληνική Επανάσταση, 1821-1830).

Lord Byron's reputation in England has continued to be overshadowed by his legendary scandals. In fact, when his coffin arrived at Westminster Abbey on July 5, 1823, burial and a memorial plaque in the famed Poets' Corner were refused by the Abbey because of Lord Byron's questionable morality. His coffin was then transported to his family vault in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham in central eastern England.

Subsequent requests for a memorial plaque for Lord Byron in the Poets Corner were made to Westminster Abbey, and all were refused. A third request was rejected in 1924. The Abbey refused to reconsider even though supporters included novelist Thomas Hardy (June 2, 1840 - January 11, 1928), Nobel Prize winning writer and poet Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 - January 18, 1936), and three former prime ministers: Herbert Henry Asquith (September 12, 1852-February 15, 1928), Arthur James Balfour (July 25, 1848 - March 19, 1930), and David Lloyd George (January 17, 1863 - March 26, 1945).

Finally, in 1969 Westminster Abbey announced that a memorial tablet for Lord Byron would be installed. On the plaque are lines from Canto IV Stanza 137 of the poem that first brought him fame, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:

And there is that within me
Which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire.

Although these lines are impressive, their true effect is conveyed best within the entire nine lines of the stanza:

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their soften'd spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.

These lines also are featured on a memorial stone in a garden established by the Church of St. Mary Magdalene on April 20, 1996, in recognition of the respect that is still accorded to this charismatic, controversial literary giant by thousands of visitors every year to his final resting place.

In its eleventh year in 2009, the International Byron Festival is held annually in Hucknall in mid-July to commemorate Lord Byron's burial at the Church and to celebrate his many interests and accomplishments. At the festival in 2004, a khatchkar (Armenian stone cross) was affixed to the tower, the oldest part of the church, dating from 1120. This festival highlighted the enduring esteem with which Lord Byron is held in the Republic of Armenia and marked the friendship ties between the Lord Byron School in Gyumri, Armenia and Holgate Comprehensive School in Hucknall. The Lord Byron School was rebuilt in 1988 with funds from the British government and donations from the British people. It replaced and renamed a school, founded in 1950 and named for Armenian playwright Gabriel Soundukyan (July 11, 1825 - March 29, 1912), that was destroyed by a devastating earthquake. Lord Byron's contributions to Armenian culture and studies are remembered to this day by Armenians worldwide.

At the Church of St. Mary Magdalene it is clear that Lord Byron belongs to the ages and that his spirit has found its proper resting place. He lived and did not live in vain. For every detractor, there have been many true admirers who found inspiration in his well-expressed Romantic ideals. An artist's work stands the test of time when it is embraced by succeeding generations, almost as though new life is breathed into it again and again and again.
And finally it is not surprising that a church named for the Bible's most misunderstood and most defamed woman would welcome the most notorious and most maligned poet of the nineteenth century. Just as history has witnessed the vindication of Mary Magdalene's reputation, so those "hearts all rocky now" have been moved to "the late remorse of love" for the poet whom Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (December 21, 1804 - April 19, 1881) described as "the most distinguished Englishman of the nineteenth century."

A telling event that Lord Byron was not an irredeemable wanton was the request by his daughter Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (December 10, 1815 - November 27, 1852), who never knew her father, to be buried beside him in the family vault rather than in her husband's or her mother's family vaults. Under Anne Isabella's tutelage, Ada was a gifted mathematician. Ada is remembered to this day for her important contributions to the analytical engine, an early type of computer designed by Charles Babbage (December 26, 1791 - October 18, 1871). She is considered to be the world's first computer programmer. ADA, the U.S. Department of Defense computer language, was named in her honor.

The following five poems show Lord Byron's command of language, his emotional sensitivity, his effective use of vivid as well as subtle imagery, and his understanding of poetry's nuances. Easily understood almost two centuries later, they clearly transcend time and place, effortlessly resonating across life's emotional spectrum.

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--
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 so 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.

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!

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 heart 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.

Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh, give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.

By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each Aegean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.

By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.

Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.

[Note: The line in Greek which ends each stanza is transliterated as Zoi mou sas agapo, "My life I love thee."]

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

"Byron's Statue at Missolonghi," The New York Times, December 11, 1881.

Ritchie, Anne. Records of Tennyson Ruskin and Browning. New York: Harper & Brothers Franklin Square, 1893.

Smeltz, Aurelia, "In the Footsteps of Lord Byron." http://www.aurelia.us.com/aurelia-articles-messolonghi.html

Copyright April 29, 2010 by Stessily