The Letters of Lord Byron - selected by R G Howarth

Lord Byron is one of the most famous literary figures the world has ever known. Whether his fame is due to his romantically early death in the cause of Greek independence or because of his scandalous private life, Byron was famous amongst his contemporaries & remains famous today. His fame should rest on his wonderful poetry & his letters, which I've been reading over the last month, rather than speculation about whether he had an affair with his half-sister or what he could possibly have done to make his wife leave him only a year after their marriage. The letters are full of fun & wit. I laughed out loud often but Byron also writes of his misery over the death of friends; his despair at his famously unhappy marriage & the aftermath of his separation from Annabella. He tells a fantastically good story & often skewers an opponent (often his much-loathed mother-in-law, Lady Noel) with a witty phrase.

His correspondents include his half-sister, Augusta, his friends, Thomas Moore & John Cam Hobhouse, & his publisher, John Murray. The letters to Murray are my favourites. In between instructions for the publication of his latest work, he implores Murray to send him supplies of magnesia, corn plasters & tooth powder. Quotations from Shakespeare (particularly Macbeth), Scott & other favourite authors are just dropped in everywhere, in the middle of sentences, as if his thoughts were a mixture of  his reading & his own experience.

Most of the letters were written in his self-imposed exile in Italy, where he went to escape the gossip surrounding the end of his marriage. Byron was already famous for his poetry by this time, especially Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which drew on his experiences travelling in Greece & the Middle East. His style is so readable, racy & colloquial, like a novel in verse, giving the impression that it was just dashed off, written as quickly as it can be read. The public confused the man with his creations & the image of the Byronic hero was an amalgam of Byron himself & his characters. His relationships, most notoriously with Lady Caroline Lamb, who called him "mad, bad and dangerous to know" & wrote a novel, Glenarvon, about their affair, added to the mystique surrounding him.

As you can see, I kept putting sticky notes in my copy as I read & I'd much rather share some of my favourite passages so you can hear the man himself rather than me trying to describe him.

To Anne Isabella Milbanke, after their engagement,

I did not believe such a woman existed - at least for me,- and I sometimes fear I ought to wish that she had not. I must turn from the subject.
My love, do forgive me if I have written in a spirit that renders you uncomfortable. I cannot embody my feelings in words. I have nothing to desire - nothing I would see altered in you - but so much in myself. I can conceive no misery equal to mine, if I failed in making you happy,- and yet how can I hope to do justice to those merits from whose praise there is not a dissentient voice?
14 October 1814

To his sister, Augusta,

I heard the other day that she (Annabella) was very unwell. I was shocked enough - and sorry enough, God knows, but never mind; H (Hobhouse) tells me however that she is not ill; that she had been indisposed, but is better and well to do - This is a relief. As for me I am in good health, and fair, though very unequal spirits; but for all that - she - or rather the Separation - has broken my heart. I feel as if an Elephant had trodden on it. I am convinced that I shall never get over it - but I try.
8 September 1816

To Thomas Moore,

I rejoice to hear of your forthcoming in February - though I tremble for the 'magnificence' which you attribute to the new Childe Harold. I am glad you like it; it is a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love unextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies. I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law; and, even then, if I could have been certain to haunt her - but I won't dwell upon these trifling family matters.
28 January 1817

To John Murray,

The story of Shelley's agitation (on the famous night when Byron, the Shelleys & Dr Polidori told each other ghost stories & Mary Shelley had the nightmare that resulted in her writing Frankenstein) is true. I can't tell what seized him for he don't want courage. He was once with me in a gale of Wind, in a small boat, right under the rocks between Meillerie and St Gingo. ... The sail was mismanaged, and the boat was filling fast. He can't swim. I stripped off my coat - made him strip off his and take hold of an oar, telling him that I thought (being an expert swimmer) I could save him, if he would not struggle when I took hold of him ... He answered me with the greatest coolness, that 'he had no notion of being saved, and that I would have enough to do to save myself, and begged not to trouble me.' Luckily, the boat righted, and, baling, we got round a point into St Gingo ... 
And yet the same Shelley, who was as cool as it was possible to be in such circumstances ... certainly had the fit of phantasy which Polidori describes, though not exactly as he describes it.
15 May 1819

To John Murray,

Dear Murray,
I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to propose to you the following articles for our future:-
1stly That you shall write to me of yourself, of the health, wealth, and welfare of all friends; but of me (quoad me) little or nothing.
2dly That you shall send me Soda powders, tooth-powder, tooth-brushes, or any such anti-odontalgic or chemical articles, as heretofore, ad libitum, upon being re-imbursed for the same.
3dly that you shall not send me any modern, or (as they are called) new, publications in English whatsoever, save and excepting any writing, prose or verse, of (or reasonably presumed to be of) Walter Scott, Crabbe, Moore ... or any especial single work of fancy, which is thought to be of considerable merit. ...
5thly That you send me no opinions whatsoever, whether good, bad, or indifferent, of yourself, or your friends, or others, concerning any work, or works, of mine, past, present, or to come.
24 September 1821

This edition is a reprint of the 1933 selection of the Letters by R G Howarth. Byron's Letters were originally collected & published by Thomas Moore, who deleted some material considered too shocking or embarrassing for publication, replacing the offending words with asterisks. It wasn't until Leslie Marchand's 12 volume Collected Letters was published in the 1970s, that an unexpurgated edition was available.

Thank you to Mike Walmer for sending me a review copy.

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

I've posted this poem before but it's one of my favourites so I'm not going to apologize for repeating myself. I was so pleased to find the poem in its context as I was reading Byron's Letters. He included it in a letter he wrote to his great friend, Thomas Moore, from Venice on February 28th 1817. Byron tells Moore about Carnival season in Venice, "At present, I am on the invalid regime myself. The Carnival - that is, the latter part of it, and sitting up late o'nights, had knocked me up a little. But it is over - and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and sacred music." He feels tired & worn out, at the age of twenty-nine.

If I live ten years longer, you will see, however, that it is not over with me - I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and it may seem odd enough to say, I do not think it my vocation. But you will see that I will do something or other - the times and fortune permitting - that, 'like the cosmogony, or creation of the world, will puzzle the philosophers of all ages'. But I doubt whether my constitution will hold out. I have, at intervals, exorcised it most devilishly.

The rest of the letter is about literary matters, gossip about reviews in English periodicals & enquiries about Moore's own plans for publication.

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 day returns too soon,     
Yet we'll go no more a-roving   
  By the light of the moon.

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

I'm about halfway through reading the Letters of Lord Byron, recently reprinted by Michael Walmer. Byron has just fled to the Continent after the scandal surrounding the end of his marriage. Among the many rumours about the breakdown of his marriage was one that accused Byron of having an affair with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. They were devoted to each other & Byron was devastated to be separated from Augusta, sending little presents back to England for Augusta's daughters & his own little girl, Ada.

I don't think anyone really knows whether or not they were lovers (although there have been many theories) but this poem is full of despair, misery & sadness & I find it very poignant.

Though the day of my destiny's over,
  And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
  The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
  It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
  It never hath found but in thee.

Then when nature around me is smiling
  The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling
  Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
  As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion
  It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
  And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd
  To pain--it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
  They may crush, but they shall not contemn--
They may torture, but shall not subdue me--
  'Tis of thee that I think--not of them.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
  Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
  Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake,--
Though trusted, thou didst not betray me,
  Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
  Nor, mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
  Nor the war of the many with one--
If my soul was not fitted to prize it
  'Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
  And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
  It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

A light-hearted poem with a touch of melancholy written, as the poet tells us, On The Road Between Florence and Pisa, in 1821.

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?
'Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled:
Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!
What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?

O Fame!—if I e'er took delight in thy praises,
'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.

There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

This is one of those poems that I must have read many times but I can only ever remember the first two lines. The Destruction of Sennacherib was published in Byron's Hebrew Melodies in 1815. It's based on the Biblical story from 2 Kings, of the Assyrian king Sennacherib's campaign to capture Jerusalem. Looking this up, I also discovered that the form of the poem is an anapestic tetrameter, which means it sounds like the galloping of a horse. Which is exactly how it does sound if you read it aloud, I just didn't know that the effect had a name.

I also discovered (Wikipedia is a wonderful thing) that Punch published a parody of the poem when the Australian cricket team toured England in 1878 & prevented the legendary W G Grace from getting into his stride.

The Australians came down like a wolf on the fold,
The Marylebone cracks for a trifle were bowled;
Our Grace before dinner was very soon done,
And Grace after dinner did not get a run.

Anyway, here's the original & the best.

 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!

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

I've preordered the DVD of Wolf Hall from the UK & I've just finished listening to the audio book of Georgette Heyer's Royal Escape, about the flight of Charles II after Worcester, so this poem seems appropriate. Byron loathed the Prince Regent & I'm sympathetic to that point of view as I don't think poor Prinny had much to recommend him.

It's called Windsor Poetics & Byron prefaces the poem with this explanation -

Lines composed on the occasion of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent being seen standing between the coffins of Henry VIII and Charles I, in the royal vault at Windsor.

Famed for contemptuous breach of sacred ties,
By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies;
Between them stands another sceptred thing—
It moves, it reigns—in all but name, a king:

Charles to his people, Henry to his wife,
—In him the double tyrant starts to life:
Justice and Death have mixed their dust in vain,
Each royal Vampire wakes to life again.
Ah, what can tombs avail!—since these disgorge
The blood and dust of both—to mould a George

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

I've just started reading the Letters of Lord Byron, newly reprinted by Michael Walmer from the 1933 edition selected by R G Howarth. Mike was kind enough to send me a copy for review & I'm looking forward to both reading the letters & the poetry. I've always loved Byron's poetry, especially the shorter lyrics so I thought I'd feature them this month in the Sunday Poetry post.

This poem is well suited to a summer Sunday in Melbourne, although I can't hear the ocean from where I live. It's a lovely image though.
There be none of Beauty's daughters   
  With a magic like thee;   
And like music on the waters   
  Is thy sweet voice to me:   
When, as if its sound were causing            
The charmed ocean's pausing,   
The waves lie still and gleaming,   
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:   
 
And the midnight moon is weaving   
  Her bright chain o'er the deep,     
Whose breast is gently heaving   
  As an infant's asleep:   
So the spirit bows before thee   
To listen and adore thee;   
With a full but soft emotion,     
Like the swell of summer's ocean.

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

Another poem by Byron which I came across in my anthology & I don't think I've ever read before. It's called On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year & it was written only months before his death which makes it even more poignant. The speaker sounds so weary & melancholy almost as though he foresees his death in a soldier's grave although Byron died of fever rather than on the battlefield. Nevertheless he was in Greece to help the Independence movement even though he had no military experience & he may have been looking back on his life when he wrote this.

       'Tis time the heart should be unmoved,
        Since others it hath ceased to move:
        Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
        Still let me love!
        
        My days are in the yellow leaf;
        The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
        The worm, the canker, and the grief
        Are mine alone!
        
        The fire that on my bosom preys
        Is lone as some volcanic isle;
        No torch is kindled at its blaze--
        A funeral pile.
        
        The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
        The exalted portion of the pain
        And power of love, I cannot share,
        But wear the chain.
        
        But 'tis not thus--and 'tis not here--
        Such thoughts should shake my soul nor now,
        Where glory decks the hero's bier,
        Or binds his brow.
        
        The sword, the banner, and the field,
        Glory and Greece, around me see!
        The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
        Was not more free.
        
        Awake! (not Greece--she is awake!)
        Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
        Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
        And then strike home!
        
        Tread those reviving passions down,
        Unworthy manhood!--unto thee
        Indifferent should the smile or frown
        Of beauty be.
        
        If thou regrett'st thy youth, why live?
        The land of honourable death
        Is here:--up to the field, and give
        Away thy breath!
        
        Seek out--less often sought than found--
        A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
        Then look around, and choose thy ground,
        And take thy rest.

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

This lovely poem, The Maid of Athens, is by Lord Byron. It's reminiscent of the many poems where the lover describes his beloved as an aid to remembrance or to convince her that she will not be forgotten. Apparently Byron wrote the poem on leaving Greece in 1810 & it was dedicated to the three daughters of his landlady. He described Teresa, Mariana & Kattinka as "divinities" & wrote in a letter that he was "dying of love for them". Somehow I don't imagine Byron pined for very long!

Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh, give back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
My life, I love you.

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,
My life, I love you.

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,
My life, I love you..

Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istamboul,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
My life, I love you.

Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

This is Byron (picture from here) in true Byronic mode. Tombs, graves, noxious nightshade, fond breast heaving a parting sigh & death. Written in 1818 & published after the poet's death, it's Romantic & romantic if a bit over the top.

If I forsake thee, early be my tomb,
My bed untended, and unwept my doom;
Around my grave let no fresh verdure spring,
No plaintive bird within its precincts sing;
Let no fair flower adorn my turfy bed,
No violets spring, no roses life their head;
But there let weeds, and noxious nightshade thrive;
There only what to life is fatal, live:
So shall mankind avoid the hated place,
Shunned and detested by the brutal race;
All bu the shrieking owl, and bat obscene,
Shall fly the relics of a thing so mean.


But if, as Heaven is witness, such shall be,
Death only can divorce my heart from thee;
If this fond breast shall heave its parting sigh,
Loth only, as 'tis leaving thee, to die;
The let affliction drop the pious tear,
The tribute sacred to the heart sincere:
Let no the gaudy pomps of seeming woe,
The paltry debt that pride to pride may owe - 
Let, while surviving summers still are thine,
Let all thy thoughts, thy tenderest thoughts, be mine;
And when thy peaceful course fulfilled in this,
The fate shall call thee to the world of bliss,
In one sepulchral mansion let us rest,
By the same simple grassy tomb compressed;
Let mingling urns our mutual loves requite,
And death which parted once, once more unite.

Sunday Poetry - Love in Abeyance

This has always been one of my favourite poems. It could be about the Scots Border reivers harrying the English through the centuries or about a highwayman & his gang at the end of their career. Byron's (picture from here) short lyrics are just perfect. This one is romantic, melancholy, elegiac, lovely.

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 day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

Sunday poetry - Lord Byron

This melancholy poem by Lord Byron (picture from here) has all the ingredients of a three volume Victorian novel. Or one of those Pre-Raphaelite pictures like Found by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I love Byron's comic poetry. I remember reading Don Juan one summer but his lyrics like this poem, She Walks in Beauty or We'll Go No More A-Roving are just perfect gems.

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 too 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.