The Poetry of Lord Byron

George Gordon, later Lord Byron, published Fugitive Pieces in 1806 when he was only 18 years old. It was printed, but Byron's friends, particularly Reverend Thomas Beecher, advised him that it contained poems that were scandalously amorous, particularly the poem "To Mary". Byron suppressed it by having all the copies destroyed - or so he thought. As it happened, Thomas Beecher himself kept his copy, and there were three other copies that were not destroyed.

For those who love Byron’s poetry, the value of this work is not so much the poetry itself as the promise of what is to come, it is fascinating to see how his power as a poet is constantly growing and to see how his enormously romantic heart and soul goes about fashioning itself.What sort of poems are these? They are the work of an enormously talented young man, whose skills as a poet are still developing.

As in the first two volumes of this series, our interest in these poems is not so much the poetry itself as the promise of what is to come. In these poems, mostly written in the years just before Byron left England to tour in Europe, it is fascinating to see how his power as a poet is constantly growing and to see how his enormously romantic heart and soul goes about fashioning itself.

In this, the fourth volume of this series, we hear the poetry in which Byron began to make his mark on the world. Though his major breakthrough with Childe Harold is yet to come, his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was a definite hit in its time, establishing Byron as a known poet and ensuring that his reputation as a literary bad-boy was off to a good start.

Childe Harold narrates the experiences of a young nobleman, sated with the wine, women, and song of his native England, who goes forth in search of the wine, women, song, and adventure of Spain, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire. The book is literally an armchair travelogue in rhyming couplets. He expresses himself in vivid, forceful and emotional language on all that he enounters and shapes his experience into a deep study of that subject so favored by all the Romantic poets - himself.

With Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, cantos III and IV, Byron comes to the high point of his work and to clear and definite mastery of his art as a poet. Though he himself doubts his powers - he says his visions no longer swim so palpably before his eyes as once they did - his visions are far more palpable to us, expressed as they are with the full depth of his romantic and passionate feelings. He continues the device of the journey of the fictional Harold, but Harold is almost a ghost; the thin disguise and facade that separates him from the poet essentaily vanishes.

Here is part of the byroads-and-backwaters side of Lord Byron - poems you probably won't hear elsewhere, poems he wrote casually and sometimes never published, but poems that offer a side of him not seen elsewhere.

We hope you will enjoy these fine, old-fashioned stories that Lord Byron wrote in an old-fashioned way. He tells these tales in rhyming verse and heroic couplets, and he makes them dashing, romantic, and even melodramatic in a way that has become foreign to us with the passing of time.

This volume of Lord Byron’s poetry contains four sets of his poems, starting with his famous book of poetry, Hebrew Melodies, and continuing with the Poems of the Separation, poetry he wrote in the period 1816-1823, his “Jeux d’Esprit”, and a group of poems written in homage to the great poets of Italy. Hebrew Melodies is a collection of lyrics Byron wrote to be set to music, as indeed they were, by a composer named Isaac Nathan.

This volume of The Poetry of Lord Byron is focused on work in which Byron dealt with certain themes that recurred throughout his career, especially personal integrity in the search for freedom and for love, and the suffering that can go with that search. "The Prisoner of Chillon", the keynote piece of this volume, is one of Byron’s most riveting pieces. Based on the true story of Francois Bonivard, it tells a story of political repression and human endurance.

The best way to appreciate this long and fascinating poem, really a novel in verse, is to just let it wash over you. Don't try to get caught up in the story, for Byron won't let you do that; don't try to figure it out, for Byron doesn't want you to do that either. Just listen to the man converse with you and enjoy his playful talk - that's why he wrote it, and that's what it's for.