Favorite Byron

[George Gordon]

What is your favorite poem by Lord Byron?

This is the kind of subject where I don't know whether to expect silence and cricket chirps or a flood of replies - Byron surely had his day, but is he still popular? Feel free to discuss this as well. He certainly wrote enough things to choose from!

My favorite poem overall has got to be Don Juan (not too surprising there). But if I were to go by category, my favorite verse-tale would be Lara and my favorite drama would be Cain.

He truly came to full self-realization in Don Juan, but the picturesque Gothic elements and grand sweep of Lara are a lot of fun, and that crazy dimension-traveling, visionary episode in Act II of Cain is just fantastic.

What does everybody think?

[desiresjab]

My contact with Byron has been superficial. Still, you can't forget this:


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.

[George Gordon]

You know, I had forgot that he wrote that one, and yet it's so well known! Such a buoyant, and yet very sad poem.

Thanks so much for bringing that back to mind - despite its apparent simplicity, it invites multiple rereadings.

[fajfall]

This is the first Byron I learned, and it's one of my favourites of any poem. It's the subtlety of the style that's enamouring:

Coblentz
(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)

BY Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground,
There is a small and simple pyramid,
Crowning the summit of the verdant mound;
Beneath its base are heroes’ ashes hid,
Our enemy’s; but let not that forbid 5
Honor to Marceau, o’er whose early tomb
Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier’s lid,
Lamenting and yet envying such a doom,—
Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.

Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career: 10
His mourners were two hosts,—his friends and foes,—
And fitly may the stranger lingering here
Pray for his gallant spirit’s bright repose;
For he was Freedom’s champion, one of those,
The few in number, who had not o’erstept 15
The charter to chastise which she bestows
On such as wield her weapons: he had kept
The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o’er him wept.

[sandy14]

I like Mazeppa. She walks in Beauty like the Night, and So, we'll go no more a roving are favourites too.

[George Gordon]

This is the first Byron I learned, and it's one of my favourites of any poem. It's the subtlety of the style that's enamouring:

Coblentz
(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)

BY Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground...

That looks like it's from Canto III - I'm not completely sure why, but Canto III has always been my favorite. Must be something in the imagery, plus the bits about Napoleon.

[George Gordon]

I like Mazeppa. She walks in Beauty like the Night, and So, we'll go no more a roving are favourites too.

Yes, Mazeppa is pretty great. Ada Isaacs Menken did a sensational theatre version of it as a travesty role in the 19th century. Also one of my favorite Liszt symphonic poems.