The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2

by Lord Byron, Ernest Hartley Coleridge (Editor)

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Poetry

382 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1864

About the author

George Gordon Byron (invariably known as Lord Byron), later Noel, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale FRS was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential, both in the English-speaking world and beyond.

Byron's notabilty rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured upper-class living, numerous love affairs, debts, and separation. He was notably described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization, the Carbonari, in its struggle against Austria. He later travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever contracted while in Messolonghi in Greece.

Reviews

[K.S. Trenten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of my complaints about this particular book have to do with this Kindle edition. It got stuck. It wasn’t always clear which poem I was reading, whether I was in the middle of Child Harold or a different one altogether. Nor was it clear whom the speaker was or what he was doing. Clues as to the location were dropped in an emotional reaction to a historic site, a location, and the flight of fancy each would invoke. These flights soared to dramatic heights, punctuated by a heartfelt melancholy or ecstacy, exquisitely expressed. Passion drives these poems, which find the right words to fit their feelings. Plus there is an index/guide explaining the back story behind the many objects and sites described, offering up a little myth and history to accompany the poems.

There were times when Byron irritated me with his insistence on regarding women in a limited, idealized sphere even when his own real life acquaintances offered up much richer material (like Mary Shelley and Lady Caroline Lamb). Perhaps he wished escape from this knowledge? I can’t help but smile at his enthusiasm, his sarcasm in the face of hypocrisy and stupidity, along with his romantic spirit which finds a voice in his poetry, no matter what his personal circumstances were at the time. For all of these things, plus a poetry which achieves a life of its own independent of my own knowledge of the poet (I’ll admit he’s a subject of some fascination of mine), this book gets four stars.

[Marios]

"Ancient of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that were:
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
They won, and pass'd away - is this the whole?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power."