GEORGE GORDON BRYON
POSTED BY: JOHN REY Q TALISAYSAY
SOURCES:
http://englishhistory.net/byron/life.html
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/byron/love_and_death.html
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/byron/epitaph_to_dog.html
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/byron/all_is_vanity_saith.html
George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron, was born 22 January 1788 in London and died 19 April 1824 in Missolonghi, Greece. He was among the most famous of the English 'Romantic' poets; his contemporaries included Percy Shelley and John Keats. He was also a satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagin(1819-24). He died of fever and exposure while engaged in the Greek struggle for independence.
ation of Europe. His major works include Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18) and Don Juan
As a child he was known simply as George Noel Gordon. Born with a clubfoot, he was taken by his mother, Catherine Gordon, to Aberdeen, Scotland, where they lived in lodgings on a meager income. He attended the grammar school there. He was extremely sensitive of his lameness; its effect upon his character was obvious enough . It was rumored that his nurse, May Gray, made physical advances to him when he was only nine. This experience and his idealized love for his distant cousins Mary Duff and Margaret Parker shaped his paradoxical attitudes toward women.
At the age of 10, George inherited the title and estates of his great-uncle, the "wicked" Lord Byron. His mother proudly took him to England. The boy fell in love with the ghostly halls and spacious grounds of Newstead Abbey, which had been presented to the Byron family by the infamous King Henry VIII, and he and his mother lived in its ruins for a while. He was privately tutored in Nottingham and his clubfoot was doctored by a quack named Lavender. John Hanson, Mrs. Byron’s attorney, rescued him from the pernicious influence of May Gray, the tortures of Lavender, and the increasingly uneven temper of his mother. He took him to London, where a reputable doctor prescribed a special brace, and in the autumn of 1799 Hanson sent him to a school in Dulwich.
In 1801 Byron went to Harrow, where his friendships with younger boys fostered a romantic attachment to the school. It is possible that these friendships gave the first impetus to his sexual ambivalence, which became more pronounced at Cambridge and later in Greece. He spent the summer of 1803 with his mother at Southwell, near Nottingham, but soon escaped to Newstead and stayed with his tenant, Lord Grey, and courted his distant cousin Mary Chaworth. When she grew tired of "that lame boy," he indulged his grief by writing melancholy poetry and Mary became the symbol of idealized and unattainable love. Later, when he had achieved fame and become the darling of London society, she came to regret her rejection.
After a term at Trinity College, Byron indulged in dissipation and undue generosity in London that put him deeply into debt. He returned in the summer of 1806 to Southwell, where he gathered his early poems in a volume privately printed in November with the title Fugitive Pieces. The following June his first published poems, Hours of Idleness, appeared. When he returned to Trinity he formed a close friendship with John Cam Hobhouse, who stirred his interest in liberal Whiggism. At the beginning of 1808, he entered into "an abyss of sensuality" in London that threatened to undermine his health. On reaching his majority in January 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords, published an anonymous satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and embarked with Hobhouse on a grand tour.
The sailed on the Lisbon packet, which inspired one of Byron's funniest poems, crossed Spain, and proceeded by Gibraltar to Malta. There Byron fell in love with a married woman and almost fought a duel on her account. Byron and Hobhouse next landed at Preveza, Greece, and made an inland voyage to Janina and later to Tepelene in Albania to visit Ali Pasa. On there return Byron began at Janina an autobiographical poem, Childe Harold, which he continued during the journey to Athens. They lodged with a widow, whose daughter, Theresa Macri, Byron celebrated as The Maid of Athens. In March 1810 he sailed with Hobhouse for Constantinople by way of Smyrna, and, while becalmed at the mouth of the Hellespont, Byron visited the site of Troy and swam the channel in imitation of Leander. Byron’s sojourn in Greece made a lasting impression on his mind and character - he delighted in the sunshine and moral tolerance of the people. After leaving, he often spoke longingly of his visit - and his desire to return.
Byron arrived in London on 14 July 1811, and his mother died on August 1 before he could reach her at Newstead. On 27 February 1812, he made his first speech in the House of Lords, and at the beginning of March, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage published by John Murray and took the town by storm. Besides furnishing a poetic travelogue of picturesque lands, it gave vents to the moods of melancholy and disillusionment of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. And the poem conveyed the disparity between the romantic ideal and the world of reality, a unique achievement in 19th century verse. Byron was lionized in Whig society and the handsome poet with the clubfoot was swept into affairs with the passionate Lady Caroline Lamb, the "autumnal" Lady Oxford, Lady Frances Webster, and - possibly - his
half-sister, Augusta Leigh. The agitation of these affairs and the sense of mingled guilt and exultation they aroused in his mind are reflected in the Oriental tales he wrote during the period.
"All Is Vanity, Saith the Preacher"
Epitaph To a Dog
When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown by glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And stories urns record that rests below.
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,
Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth –
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power –
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!
By nature vile, ennoble but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye, who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on – it honors none you wish to mourn.
To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one – and here he lies.
Love And Death
I watched thee when the foe was at our side,
Ready to strike at him – or thee and me
Were safety hopeless – rather than divide
Aught with one loved save love and liberty.
I watched thee on the breakers where a rock
Received our prow and all was storm and fear,
And bade thee cling to me through every shock;
This arm would be thy bark, or breast thy bier.
I watched thee when the fever glazed thine eyes,
Yielding my couch and stretched me on the ground,
When overworn with watching ne’er to rise
From thence if thou and early grave hadst found.
The earthquake came, and rocked the quivering wall,
And men and nature reeled as if with wine.
Whom did I seek around the tottering hall?
For thee. Whose safety first prove for? Thine.
And when convulsive throes denied my breath
The faintest utterance to my fading thought,
To thee – to thee – e’en in the gasp of death
My spirit turned, oh! oftener than it ought.
Thus much and more; and yet thou lovs’t me not,
And never wilt! Love dwells not in our will
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot
To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still.
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