By the Rivers of Babylon We Sat Down and Wept, 1815
1
We sat down and wept by the waters
Of Babel, and thought of the day
When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters,
Made Salem's high places his prey;
And ye, oh her desolate daughters!
Were scattered all weeping away.
2
While sadly we gazed on the river
Which rolled on in freedom below,
They demanded the song; but, oh never
That triumph the stranger shall know!
May this right hand be withered for ever,
Ere it string our high harp for the foe!
3
On the willow that harp is suspended,
Oh Salem! its sound should be free;
And the hour when thy glories were
ended
But left me that token of thee:
And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended
With the voice of the spoiler by me!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Selected Poetry: By the Rivers of Babylon We Sat Down and Wept
Selected Poetry: My Soul is Dark
My Soul is Dark
My soul is dark - Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.
But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence, long;
And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,
And break at once - or yield to song.
Selected Poetry: John Keats
John Keats, 1821
Who killed John Keats?
'I,' says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
''Twas one of my feats.'
Who shot the arrow?
'The poet-priest Milman
(So ready to kill man),
Or Southey or Barrow.'
Selected Poetry: Epistle to Augusta
Epistle to Augusta, published 1830
1 My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
2 Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
3 Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
4 No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
5 Go where I will, to me thou art the same
6 A lov'd regret which I would not resign.
7 There yet are two things in my destiny--
8 A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
9 The first were nothing--had I still the last,
10 It were the haven of my happiness;
11 But other claims and other ties thou hast,
12 And mine is not the wish to make them less.
13 A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
14 Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
15 Revers'd for him our grandsire's fate of yore--
16 He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.
17 If my inheritance of storms hath been
18 In other elements, and on the rocks
19 Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,
20 I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
21 The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
22 My errors with defensive paradox;
23 I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
24 The careful pilot of my proper woe.
25 Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
26 My whole life was a contest, since the day
27 That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
28 The gift--a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
29 And I at times have found the struggle hard,
30 And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:
31 But now I fain would for a time survive,
32 If but to see what next can well arrive.
33 Kingdoms and empires in my little day
34 I have outliv'd, and yet I am not old;
35 And when I look on this, the petty spray
36 Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd
37 Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
38 Something--I know not what--does still uphold
39 A spirit of slight patience; not in vain,
40 Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.
41 Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
42 Within me--or perhaps a cold despair,
43 Brought on when ills habitually recur,
44 Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air
45 (For even to this may change of soul refer,
46 And with light armour we may learn to bear),
47 Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
48 The chief companion of a calmer lot.
49 I feel almost at times as I have felt
50 In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks,
51 Which do remember me of where I dwelt
52 Ere my young mind was sacrific'd to books,
53 Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
54 My heart with recognition of their looks;
55 And even at moments I could think I see
56 Some living thing to love--but none like thee.
57 Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
58 A fund for contemplation; to admire
59 Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
60 But something worthier do such scenes inspire:
61 Here to be lonely is not desolate,
62 For much I view which I could most desire,
63 And, above all, a lake I can behold
64 Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.
65 Oh that thou wert but with me!--but I grow
66 The fool of my own wishes, and forget
67 The solitude which I have vaunted so
68 Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
69 There may be others which I less may show;
70 I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
71 I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
72 And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.
73 I did remind thee of our own dear Lake,
74 By the old Hall which may be mine no more.
75 Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
76 The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
77 Sad havoc Time must with my memory make
78 Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;
79 Though, like all things which I have lov'd, they are
80 Resign'd for ever, or divided far.
81 The world is all before me; I but ask
82 Of Nature that with which she will comply--
83 It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
84 To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
85 To see her gentle face without a mask,
86 And never gaze on it with apathy.
87 She was my early friend, and now shall be
88 My sister--till I look again on thee.
89 I can reduce all feelings but this one;
90 And that I would not; for at length I see
91 Such scenes as those wherein my life begun,
92 The earliest--even the only paths for me--
93 Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
94 I had been better than I now can be;
95 The passions which have torn me would have slept;
96 I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept.
97 With false Ambition what had I to do?
98 Little with Love, and least of all with Fame;
99 And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
100 And made me all which they can make--a name,
101 Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
102 Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
103 But all is over--I am one the more
104 To baffled millions which have gone before.
105 And for the future, this world's future may
106 From me demand but little of my care;
107 I have outliv'd myself by many a day,
108 Having surviv'd so many things that were;
109 My years have been no slumber, but the prey
110 Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
111 Of life which might have fill'd a century,
112 Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by.
113 And for the remnant which may be to come
114 I am content; and for the past I feel
115 Not thankless, for within the crowded sum
116 Of struggles, happiness at times would steal,
117 And for the present, I would not benumb
118 My feelings further. Nor shall I conceal
119 That with all this I still can look around,
120 And worship Nature with a thought profound.
121 For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart
122 I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
123 We were and are--I am, even as thou art--
124 Beings who ne'er each other can resign;
125 It is the same, together or apart,
126 From life's commencement to its slow decline
127 We are entwin'd--let death come slow or fast,
128 The tie which bound the first endures the last!
Selected Poetry: Darkness
Darkness, first published in 1816
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.
Contemporary and Critical Opinion: Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert,
from his letters:
to Ernest Chevalier (September 13, 1838)
Really I profoundly value only two men, Rabelais and Byron, the only two who have written in a spirit of malice toward the human race and with the intention of laughing in its face. What a tremendous position a man occupies who places himself in such a relation to the world!
to Alfred Le Poittevin (May 26, 1845)
Two days ago I saw Byron's name written on one of the pillars of the dungeon where the prisoner of Chillon was confined. This sight afforded me great joy. I thought more about Byron than about the prisoner, and no ideas came to me about tyranny and slavery. All the time I though of the pale man who one day came there, walked up and down, wrote his name on the stone, and left. One would have to be very daring or very stupid to write one's name in such a place after that.
Contemporary and Critical Opinion: T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot, Byron (1937)
Of Byron one can say, as of no other English poet of his eminence, that he added nothing to the language, that he discovered nothing in the sounds, and developed nothing in the meaning, of individual words. I cannot think of any other poet of his distinction who might so easily have been an accomplished foreigner writing in English. The ordinary person talks English, but only a few people in every generation can write it; and upon this undeliberate collaboration between a great many people talking a living language and a very few people writing it, the continuance and maintenance of a language depends. Just as an artisan who can talk English beautifully while about his work or in a public bar, may compose a letter painfully written in a dead language bearing some resemblance to a newspaper leader, and decorated with words like "maelstrom" and "pandemonium": so does Byron write a dead or dying language.
Contemporary and Critical Opinion: Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf,
from A Writer's Diary (Wednesday, 7 August 1918)
Anyhow, I was very glad to go on with my Byron. He has at least the male virtues. In fact, I'm amused to find how easily I can imagine the effect he had upon women - especially upon rather stupid or uneducated women, unable to stand up to him. So many, too, would wish to reclaim him. ***I'm much impressed by the extreme badness of B.'s poetry - such of it as Moore quotes with almost speechless admiration. Why did they think this Album stuff the finest fire of poetry? It reads hardly better than L.E.L. or Ella Wheeler Wilcox. And they dissuaded him from doing what he knew he could do, which was to write satire. He came home from the East with satires (parodies of Horace) in his bag and Childe Harold. He was persuaded that Childe Harold was the best poem every written. But he never as a young man believed in his poetry; a proof, in such a confident dogmatic person, that he hadn't the gift. The Wordsworths and the Keatses believe in that as much as they believe in anything.
***At any rate Byron had superb force; his letters prove it. He had in many ways a very fine nature too; though as no one laughed him out of his affectations he became more like Horace Cole than one could wish. He could only be laughed at by a woman, and they worshipped instead. I haven't yet come to Lady Byron, but I suppose, instead of laughing, she merely disapproved. And so he became Byronic.
Contemporary and Critical Opinion: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
from Conversations with Eckermann (1822-32)
Lord Byron is to be regarded as a man, an Englishman, and as a great genius. His good qualities belong chiefly to the man, his bad to the Englishman and the peer, his talent is incommeasurable.
His high rank as an English peer was very injurious to Byron; for every talent is oppressed by the outer world, - how much more, then, when there is such high birth and so great a fortune. A certain middle rank is much more favorable to talent, on which account we find all great artists and poets in the middle classes. Byron's predilection for the unbounded could not have been nearly so dangerous with more humble birth and smaller means. But as it was, he was able to put every fancy into practice, and this involved him in innumerable scrapes. Besides, how could one of such high rank be inspired with awe and respect by any rank whatsoever? He expressed whatever he felt, and this brought him into ceaseless conflict with the world.
I could not make any use of any man as the representative of the modern poetical era except him, who undoubtedly is to be regarded as the greatest genius of our century. Byron is neither antique nor romantic, but like the present day itself. This was the sort of man I required. Then he suited me on account of his unsatisfied nature and his warlike tendency, which led to his death at Missolonghi.
Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects, he is a child.
Contemporary and Critical Opinion: Lady Caroline Lamb
Lady Caroline Lamb,from Glenarvon (1816):
Lord Glenarvon was of a disposition to attend so wholly to those in whose presence he took delight, that he failed to remember those to whom he had once been attached; so that like the wheels of a watch, the chain of his affections might be said to unwind from the absent, in proportion as they twined themselves around the favourite of the moment; and being extreme in all things, he could not sufficiently devote himself to the one, without taking from the other all that he had given.
It were vain to detail the petty instances of barbarity he employed. The web was fine enough, and wove with a skillful hand. He even consulted with Lady Mandeville in what manner to make his inhuman triumph more poignant - more galling; and when he heard that Calantha was irritated even unto madness, and grieved almost unto death, he only mocked at her folly, and despised her still remaining attachment to himself. "Indeed she is ill," said Sophia, in answer to his insulting inquiry, soon after her arrival at Mortanville Priory. "She is even dangerously ill." "And pray may I ask of what malady?" he replied, with a smile of scorn. "Of one, Lord Glenarvon," she answered with equal irony, "which will never endanger your health - of a broken heart." He laughed.
Selected Poetry: Don Juan
Don Juan: Dedication, first published in 1818
Difficile est proprie communia dicere
HOR. Epist. ad Pison
I
Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race;
Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last--yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;
II
"Which pye being open'd they began to sing"
(This old song and new simile holds good),
"A dainty dish to set before the King,"
Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,
Explaining Metaphysics to the nation--
I wish he would explain his Explanation.
III
You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only Blackbird in the dish;
And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
And tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob!
IV
And Wordsworth, in a rather long "Excursion"
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages),
Has given a sample from the vasty version
Of his new system to perplex the sages;
'Tis poetry--at least by his assertion,
And may appear so when the dog-star rages--
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.
V
You--Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continu'd fusion
Of one another's minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most logical conclusion,
That Poesy has wreaths for you alone:
There is a narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for Ocean.
VI
I would not imitate the petty thought,
Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,
For all the glory your conversion brought,
Since gold alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary; was't for that you wrought?
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.
You're shabby fellows--true--but poets still,
And duly seated on the Immortal Hill.
VII
Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows--
Perhaps some virtuous blushes--let them go--
To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs--
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is universal, and allows
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow:
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore and Crabbe, will try
'Gainst you the question with posterity.
VIII
For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy, and the skill you need;
And, recollect, a poet nothing loses
In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit, and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.
IX
He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
Being only injur'd by his own assertion;
And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,
The major part of such appellants go
To--God knows where--for no one else can know.
X
If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
Milton appeal'd to the Avenger, Time,
If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word "Miltonic" mean " sublime ,"
He deign'd not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
He did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son,
But clos'd the tyrant-hater he begun.
XI
Think'st thou, could he--the blind Old Man--arise
Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies
Or be alive again--again all hoar
With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,
And heartless daughters--worn--and pale--and poor;
Would he adore a sultan? he obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?
XII
Cold-blooded, smooth-fac'd, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fix'd,
And offer poison long already mix'd.
XIII
An orator of such set trash of phrase
Ineffably--legitimately vile,
That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes--all nations--condescend to smile,
Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.
XIV
A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,
States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confin'd,
Conspiracy or Congress to be made--
Cobbling at manacles for all mankind--
A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
With God and Man's abhorrence for its gains.
XV
If we may judge of matter by the mind,
Emasculated to the marrow It
Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many masters, blind
To worth as freedom, wisdom as to Wit,
Fearless--because no feeling dwells in ice,
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.
XVI
Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
For I will never feel them?--Italy!
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds
Beneath the lie this State-thing breath'd o'er thee--
Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green wounds,
Have voices--tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves--allies--kings--armies still,
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.
XVII
Meantime--Sir Laureate--I proceed to dedicate,
In honest simple verse, this song to you,
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue";
My politics as yet are all to educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,
To keep one creed's a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?
Byron and Keats
'You speak of Lord Byron and me - There is this great difference between us.
He describes what he sees - I describe what I imagine - Mine is the hardest task.'
John Keats in a letter to his brother George, September 1819.
The rivalry and dislike between George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron, and John Keats has been much discussed; in their own time, however, it was felt far more keenly by Keats. Byron was a flamboyant and handsome nobleman whose wit, charm and ancestral title accorded him entry into the most elite circles of English society. He was also an accomplished and celebrated poet. His first major work, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', was a great success and he enjoyed all the attendant benefits of celebrity. John Keats was a poor and struggling middle-class poet whose work was often savaged by the great critics of the age; he was advised that poetry was the provenance of nobleman such as Byron, and dismissed (by Byron, among others) as a 'Cockney' poet.
The animus between Byron and Keats is easy enough to explain. Byron was a snob, though he occasionally rose above such petty social concerns. He also revered the 18th century Augustan poets, particularly Alexander Pope, whose adherence to the classical tradition is echoed in his own early poetry. Keats's work was deeply at odds with the Augustans; also, his 'Sleep and Poetry', which Byron read, was critical of their work. Keats found inspiration in the extravagant and sensuous wordplay of the 16th century and also admired the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Those first generation Romantics poets had caused a literary revolution with their rejection of Augustan classicism. And so, quite simply, Byron disliked Keats's poetry on an aesthetic level. Keats felt likewise about Byron's work; he considered it overrated, slavish and unoriginal. It was a sort of reverse snobbery.
And there is also the simple envy Keats felt over Byron's success. As he was forever beset by financial concerns, his jealousy is understandable enough. It was exacerbated by his belief that Byron succeeded only because he was an aristocrat who catered to an undemanding audience ('You see what it is to be six foot tall and a lord!', Keats remarked to a friend upon reading a favorable review of Byron's work.)
But it is worth remembering that Byron came to recognize Keats's talent. He also scoffed at the notion that anyone would be so sensitive as to die because of bad reviews (he himself was savaged more than once.) In this respect, Byron had more insight into Keats's character than those who should have known him far better.
Byron's lovers: Lady Caroline Lamb
'Worse than adversity the Childe befell;
He felt the fulness of satiety.'
I read the "Christabel;"
Very well:
I read the "Missionary;"
Pretty - very:
I tried at "Ilderim;"
Ahem!
I read a sheet of "Marg'ret of Anjou;"
Can you?;
I turned a page of Webster's "Waterloo;"
Pooh! Pooh!
I looked at Wordsworth's milk-white "Rylstone Doe;"
Hillo!
I read "Glenarvon," too, by Caro Lamb;
God damn!
Biography
George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron, was born 22 January 1788 in London and died 19 April 1824 in Missolonghi, Greece. He was among the most famous of the English 'Romantic' poets; his contemporaries included Percy Shelley and John Keats. He was also a satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. His major works include Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18) and Don Juan (1819-24). He died of fever and exposure while engaged in the Greek struggle for independence.
As a child he was known simply as George Noel Gordon. Born with a clubfoot, he was taken by his mother, Catherine Gordon, to Aberdeen, Scotland, where they lived in lodgings on a meager income. He attended the grammar school there. He was extremely sensitive of his lameness; its effect upon his character was obvious enough . It was rumored that his nurse, May Gray, made physical advances to him when he was only nine. This experience and his idealized love for his distant cousins Mary Duff and Margaret Parker shaped his paradoxical attitudes toward women.
At the age of 10, George inherited the title and estates of his great-uncle, the "wicked" Lord Byron. His mother proudly took him to England. The boy fell in love with the ghostly halls and spacious grounds of Newstead Abbey, which had been presented to the Byron family by the infamous King Henry VIII, and he and his mother lived in its ruins for a while. He was privately tutored in Nottingham and his clubfoot was doctored by a quack named Lavender. John Hanson, Mrs. Byron’s attorney, rescued him from the pernicious influence of May Gray, the tortures of Lavender, and the increasingly uneven temper of his mother. He took him to London, where a reputable doctor prescribed a special brace, and in the autumn of 1799 Hanson sent him to a school in Dulwich.
In 1801 Byron went to Harrow, where his friendships with younger boys fostered a romantic attachment to the school. It is possible that these friendships gave the first impetus to his sexual ambivalence, which became more pronounced at Cambridge and later in Greece. He spent the summer of 1803 with his mother at Southwell, near Nottingham, but soon escaped to Newstead and stayed with his tenant, Lord Grey, and courted his distant cousin Mary Chaworth. When she grew tired of "that lame boy," he indulged his grief by writing melancholy poetry and Mary became the symbol of idealized and unattainable love. Later, when he had achieved fame and become the darling of London society, she came to regret her rejection.
After a term at Trinity College, Byron indulged in dissipation and undue generosity in London that put him deeply into debt. He returned in the summer of 1806 to Southwell, where he gathered his early poems in a volume privately printed in November with the title Fugitive Pieces. The following June his first published poems, Hours of Idleness, appeared. When he returned to Trinity he formed a close friendship with John Cam Hobhouse, who stirred his interest in liberal Whiggism. At the beginning of 1808, he entered into "an abyss of sensuality" in London that threatened to undermine his health. On reaching his majority in January 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords, published an anonymous satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and embarked with Hobhouse on a grand tour.
The sailed on the Lisbon packet, which inspired one of Byron's funniest poems, crossed Spain, and proceeded by Gibraltar to Malta. There Byron fell in love with a married woman and almost fought a duel on her account. Byron and Hobhouse next landed at Preveza, Greece, and made an inland voyage to Janina and later to Tepelene in Albania to visit Ali Pasa. On there return Byron began at Janina an autobiographical poem, Childe Harold, which he continued during the journey to Athens. They lodged with a widow, whose daughter, Theresa Macri, Byron celebrated as The Maid of Athens. In March 1810 he sailed with Hobhouse for Constantinople by way of Smyrna, and, while becalmed at the mouth of the Hellespont, Byron visited the site of Troy and swam the channel in imitation of Leander. Byron’s sojourn in Greece made a lasting impression on his mind and character - he delighted in the sunshine and moral tolerance of the people. After leaving, he often spoke longingly of his visit - and his desire to return.
Byron arrived in London on 14 July 1811, and his mother died on August 1 before he could reach her at Newstead. On 27 February 1812, he made his first speech in the House of Lords, and at the beginning of March, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage published by John Murray and took the town by storm. Besides furnishing a poetic travelogue of picturesque lands, it gave vents to the moods of melancholy and disillusionment of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. And the poem conveyed the disparity between the romantic ideal and the world of reality, a unique achievement in 19th century verse. Byron was lionized in Whig society and the handsome poet with the clubfoot was swept into affairs with the passionate Lady Caroline Lamb, the "autumnal" Lady Oxford, Lady Frances Webster, and - possibly - his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. The agitation of these affairs and the sense of mingled guilt and exultation they aroused in his mind are reflected in the Oriental tales he wrote during the period.
Seeking escape in marriage, in September 1814, he proposed to Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke. The marriage took place on 2 January 1815. After a honeymoon "not all sunshine," the Byrons, in March, settled in London. Delays in negotiations to sell Newstead left them financially embarrassed and before long bailiffs were in the house demanding payment of debts. Byron escaped to the house of John Murray, his publisher. Meanwhile, his sister Augusta Leigh had come for a visit, and Byron, exasperated by debts, irritated by his wife, and intoxicated with drink, talked wildly and hinted at past sins.
Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada, on 10 December, and in January she left with the child for a visit to her parents and let him know that she was not moving back. The reasons for her decision were never given and rumors began to fly, most of them centering on Byron’s relations with Augusta Leigh. When the rumors grew, Byron signed the legal separation papers and went abroad, never returning to England. He was now the most famous exile in Europe.
After visiting the battlefield of Waterloo, Byron journeyed to Switzerland. At the Villa Diodati, near Geneva, he was on friendly terms with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his entourage, which included William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter, Mary, who was Shelley’s wife, and Godwin’s stepdaughter by a second marriage, Claire Clairmont, who had begun an affair with Byron before he left England. A boat trip to the head of the lake with Shelley gave Byron material for his Prisoner of Chillon, and he completed a third canto of Childe Harold at Diodati (my personal favorite.) At the end of the summer the Shelley party left for England, Claire carrying Byron’s illegitimate daughter (born 12 January 1817, and named Alba by Claire and Allegra by Byron.) A tour of the Bernese Oberland with Hobhouse provided the scenery for Manfred, a Faustian poetic drama that reflected Byron’s brooding sense of guilt and remorse and the wider frustrations of the romantic spirit doomed by the reflection that man is "half dust, half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar."
On 5 October, Byron and Hobhouse left for Italy. Byron took lodgings in the house of a Venetian draper, with whose beautiful wife, Marianna Segati, he proceeded to fall in love. He studied Armenian at the monastery of San Lazzaro and occasionally attended local literary gatherings. In May he joined Hobhouse in Rome and rode over the ruins, gathering impressions that he recorded in a fourth canto of Childe Harold. At a summer villa at La Mira on the Brentat River, he also wrote Beppo, a rollicking satire on Italian manners. There he met Margarita Cogni, wife of a baker, who followed him to Venice and eventually replaced Marianna Segati in his affections. During the summer of 1818, he completed the first canto of Don Juan, a picaresque verse satire, with pointed references to his own experiences. Claire had sent his illegitimate daughter Allegra (Alba) for him to raise and was continually annoying him with admonitions.
The sale of Newstead Abbey finally cleared most of his debts and left him with a small income which supported him in Italy. But money did not solve any of his problems, notably his dissatisfaction and restlessness. Shelley and other visitors, in 1818, had found Byron grown fat, with hair long and turning gray, looking older than his years, and sunk in promiscuity. But a chance meeting with the Countess Teresa Guicciolo in April 1819 changed the course of his life. In a few days he fell completely in love with Teresa, 19 years old and married to man nearly three times her age. Byron followed her to Ravenna, and, later in the summer, she accompanied him back to Venice and stayed until her husband called for her. Byron returned to Ravenna in January 1820, as Teresa’s accepted gentleman-in-waiting. He won the friendship of her father and brother who initiated him into the secret revolutionary society of the Carbonari. In Ravenna he was brought into closer touch with the life of the Italian people than he had ever been. He gave arms to the Carbonari and alms to the poor. It was one of the happiest and most productive periods of his life. He wrote The Prophecy of Dante; three cantos for Don Juan; the poetic dramas Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari, and Cain (all published in 1821); and his satire on the poet Robert Southey, The Vision of Judgment. When Teresa’s father and brother were exiled for the part in an abortive uprising and she, now separated from her husband, was forced to follow them, Byron reluctantly removed to Pisa, where Shelley had rented the Casa Lanfranchi on the Arno River for him. He arrived on 1 November 1 1821, having left his daughter Allegra in a convent near Ravenna where he had sent her to be educated. She died on 20 April of the following year.
Byron paid daily visits to Teresa, whose father and brother had found temporary asylum in Pisa, until early summer when then all went to Leghorn, where Byron had leased a villa near Shelley’s house on the Bay of Lerici. There the poet Leigh Hunt found him on 1 July, when he arrived from England to join with Shelley and Byron in the editing of a new periodical. Hunt and his family were installed in the lower floor of Byron’s house in Pisa, where Byron and Teresa returned after her father and brother were expelled from Tuscany. The drowning of Shelley on 8 July left Hunt entirely dependent on Byron, who had already "loaned" him money for his passage and the apartment. Byron found Hunt an agreeable companion, but their relations were somewhat strained by Mrs. Hunt’s moral condescension and by the demands of her six children. Byron contributed his Vision of Judgment to the first number of the new periodical, The Liberal, which was published in London by Hunt’s brother John on 15 October 1822. At the end of September he moved his entire household to a suburb of Genoa, where Teresa’s family had found asylum and had taken a large house for him. Mary Shelley leased another house nearby for herself and the Hunts.
Byron’s interest in the periodical had waned, but he continued to support Hunt and to give manuscripts to The Liberal. After a quarrel with his publisher, John Murray, Byron gave all his later work - including cantos VI to XVI of Don Juan, The Age of Bronze, and The Island - to John Hunt. But soon enough, Byron's old restlessness returned and the domesticity of his life with Teresa gave no satisfaction. He also longed for the opportunity for some noble action that would vindicate him in the eyes of his countrymen. Accordingly, when the London Greek Committee contacted him in April 1823 to act as its agent in aiding the Greek war for independence from the Turks, Byron immediately accepted the offer. All of his legendary enthusiasm, energy, and imagination were now at the service of the Greek army.
On 16 July, Byron left Genoa on a chartered ship, arriving at the Ionian island of Cephalonia on 2 August; he settled in Metaxata. He sent 4000 pounds of his own money to prepare the Greek fleet for sea service and then sailed for Missolonghi on 29 December to join Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos, leader of the forces in western Greece. With tremendous passion he entered into the plans to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto. He employed a fire master to prepare artillery and took under his own command and pay the Souliot soldiers, reputedly the bravest of the Greeks. In addition he made dedicated but ultimately fruitless efforts to unite eastern and western Greece. On 15 February 1824 he fell ill (he possibly had two epileptic fits in a fortnight) and the usual remedy of bleeding weakened him at the same time that an insurrection of the Souliots opened his eyes to their cupidity. Though his enthusiasm for the Greek cause was undiminished, he now possessed a more realistic view of the obstacles facing the army. He was also suffering from the emotional strain of his friendship with Loukas Chalandritsanos, a Greek boy, whom he had brought as a page from Cephalonia and to whom he addressed his final poems.
The spring of 1824 was wet and miserable, and it unfortunately caught Byron while he was still weak from the convulsive fits of mid-February. He continued to carry out his duties and seemed on the path to certain recovery. But in early April he was caught outdoors in a rainstorm; though drenched and chilled, he did not hurry home. Unfortunately, he caught a violent cold which was soon aggravated by the bleeding insisted on by the doctors. Though he briefly rallied, the cold grew worse; he eventually slipped into a coma. Around six o'clock in the evening of 19 April 1824, he passed away.
Deeply mourned by the Greeks, he became a hero throughout their land. His body was embalmed; the heart was removed and buried in Missolonghi. His remains were then sent to England and, refused burial in Westminster Abbey, placed in the vault of his ancestors near Newstead. Ironically, 145 years after his death, in 1969, a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of the Abbey.
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