Selected Poems Read Online Free PDF Page A

Byron for the nineteenth century and poems less well known then but figuring in recent years in the lively discussion of Byron and the nature of Romanticism. Except for ‘The Isles of Greece’, which frequent anthologizing has given independent status (albeit problematically), we have not included selections from Don Juan , because this work is available in its entirety in the Penguin Classics Volume splendidly edited by T.G. Steffan, E. Steffan and W.W. Pratt (1986; 2004). Thus relieved from representing Don Juan , we have been able to provide complete texts of many works that do not appear entire in other currently available selections: all of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage , replete with Byron’s notes, and all but one of the Eastern tales that elaborated this sensational initial success, from The Giaour in 1813 to The Siege of Corinth in 1816, again with Byron’s notes. To suggest the range of Byron’s remarkably productive and versatile career, we also offer one of the historical dramas that occupied him in 1820–21 (and which has a soft claim to status as a ‘poem’ in being written, so Byron insisted, more for the page than the stage): Sardanapalus . In its wry use of ancient history to highlight questions of imperialism, revolution and gender that were of concern to readers in the early 1820s, Sardanapalus has emerged as an important reference in the reevaluation of Romanticism that has been taking place at the end of the twentieth century.
    The double principle that has guided our selection – works ofinterest to Byron’s contemporaries and his nineteenth-century readers as well as works of interest to readers today – has also shaped our Notes, which collate citations from contemporary reviews with concise pointers to modern criticism of each poem. (The list of Works Cited in the Notes has complete references for all items mentioned therein.) These Notes also give information about the circumstances of composition and publication of each work and gloss the salient literary, biographical and historical references. Readers wanting extensive scholarly commentaries on the compositional histories, manuscript states and stages, textual variants and disputed readings, as well as more detailed annotations of historical circumstances, references, allusions, etc., may refer to Jerome J. McGann’s major seven-volume edition of Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works (1980–93).
    The Introduction is supplemented by a Table of Dates that situates a detailed chronology of Byron’s life and career in relation to prominent events in England and abroad, and indicates some of the other works of literature being published alongside his. The chronology extends past Bryon’s death to note the most important of the posthumous presentations of his life and works that preceded the publication of Murray’s landmark edition.
    November 1995

A Fragment
When, to their airy hall, my fathers’ voice
Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice;
When, pois’d upon the gale, my form shall ride,
Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain’s side:
5
Oh! may my shade behold no sculptur’d urns
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns!
No lengthen’d scroll, no praise-encumber’d stone;
My epitaph shall be my name alone:
If that with honour fail to crown my clay,
10
Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay!
That , only that , shall single out the spot;
By that remember’d, or with that forgot.
1803.

To Woman
Woman! experience might have told me
That all must love thee who behold thee:
Surely experience might have taught
Thy firmest promises are nought;
5
But, placed in all thy charms before me,
All I forget, but to adore thee.
Oh memory! thou choicest blessing
When join’d with hope, when still possessing;
But how much cursed by every lover
10
When hope is fled and passion’s over.
Woman, that fair and fond deceiver,
How prompt are striplings to believe her!
How throbs the pulse when first we view
The eye that rolls in glossy