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The similarity of the lines, coupled with the placement of the similar evocative (and memorable) terms speaks of intention, but Byron has specifically replaced Scott's dust with water. I rather suspect that the similarity was intentional on Byron's part, and that he was engaging in the time-honored tradition of engaging in a dialogue of sorts with another poet through his own work. If such there breathe, go, mark him well Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
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That portion of The Lay (written in rhymed couplets using iambic tetrameter) is usually excerpted as "Breathes There the Man With Soul So Dead", which is generally perceived as a poem about patriotism: I cannot help but notice (and I'm certain Austen noticed as well) the similarity between the last line of stanza 179 ("unknelled, uncoffined and unknown") and a line written by Sir Walter Scott's in the narrative poem he published seven years earlier than Byron's Childe Harold, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto VI, stanza 1, which speaks of a man dying "unwept, unhonored, and unsung". Back in Byron's time, it was quite common for people to read out an entire Canto in an evening, since reading was often done aloud, and this poem, like so very many others, is designed for that purpose.
#Pleasure in the pathless woods meaning free
The extra foot in an alexandrine has the slowing or swinging effect of dragging a train around a corner (you are free to picture the train of a dress or a railroad train) - the point being that there's a little extra effort to be made on that last line, which alters the pace of the poem as a whole (if you are reading more than one stanza of the poem). The last line of each stanza is what is known as an "alexandrine", being a line in iambic hexameter ( six iambic feet per line). The rhyme scheme of each stanza is ABABBCBCC, with the first eight lines being in iambic pentameter (five iambic feet per line: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM). The form of stanza he's using is Spenserian stanza, which was used by Edmund Spenser in his magnum opus, The Faerie Queen. You may already have noticed that Byron was using a repeated meter and rhyme scheme here.
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Rather the way Caroline Lamb once described Byron: "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Other Byronic heroes of whom you might be fond include Han Solo, the vampire Lestat, Mr. Note how he praises nature and condemns man's intrusion - by which he means society, of course, because Childe Harold is the poem wherein Byron creates what is known today as the Byronic hero: a sexy, dark & twisty sort of man who is a bit of an outcast, prone to mood swings, possibly narcissistic and/or self-loathing, with a disdain of society and/or its norms, a strong cynical and arrogant streak, but with a good heart. Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.Ĭanto IV of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage marks Byron's shift from mere Romanticism to what some call "high romance". He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain Stops with the shore - upon the watery plain Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
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Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll! What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. I love not Man the less, but Nature more,įrom these our interviews, in which I steal There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, Today's selection is once again stanza 178, not only because I love it so, but also because it is the lead-in to stanza 179, which is referenced by Austen in chapter 12 of Persuasion.įrom Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth I have posted excerpts from Childe Harold before: stanzas 137 and 138 back in 2007, and one of my favorites, stanza 178 back in 2006. Today, two stanzas from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the fourth canto (a canto being rather like a chapter, if by chapter one means "a whole lot of stanzas"). Many consider it the most Romantic of her works, and certainly her references to Romantic poets such as Byron (both explicit and implicit) are part and parcel of why that is so. And so it came to pass that Byron is my pick for today, even though most of the rest of this post is a reprise from January, when I spent the entire month studying Persuasion by Jane Austen, in an event I called A Winter's Persuasion. And I kept coming up blank, except for a possible return to some verses from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage of which I am particularly fond. KellyrfinemanI spent a lot of time today trying to figure out what poem should follow yesterday's choice, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth.