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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.
Poems:
A Spirit Passed Before Me
From Job
A spirit passed before me: I beheld
The face of immortality unveiled -
Deep sleep came down on every eye save mine -
And there it stood, -all formless -but divine:
Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake;
And as my damp hair stiffened, thus it spake:
"Is man more just than God? Is man more pure
Than He who deems even Seraphs insecure?
Creatures of clay -vain dwellers in the dust!
The moth survives you, and are ye more just?
Things of a day! you wither ere the night,
Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!"
She walks in beauty
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!
Darkness
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, 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 chilled 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 consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those which dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch;
A fearful hope was all the world contained;
Forests were set on fire -but hour by hour
They fell and faded -and the crackling trunks
Extinguished 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 smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked 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 gnashed their teeth and howled; the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined 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 devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress -he died.
The crowd was famished 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 heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage: they raked up,
And shivering scraped 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 shrieked, 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 stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge -
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished! Darkness had no need
Of aid from them -She was the Universe |
