The Essential Byron (Essential Poets) - Softcover

Byron, Lord

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0880011815 ISBN 13: 9780880011815

Publisher: Ecco, 1999

Synopsis

Byron's mature style is wonderfully discursive, ranging from Aristotle through hitting the sack to hitting the bottle sack, while relishing the rhyme on "Aristotle" and "bottle" along he way; he reminds us again and again that poetry can be serious without being solemn, that it might even be fun.

About this title

About the Author

Lord Byron was an English poet and the most infamous of the English Romantics, glorified for his immoderate ways in both love and money. Benefitting from a privileged upbringing, Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage upon his return from his Grand Tour in 1811, and the poem was received with such acclaim that he became the focus of a public mania. Following the dissolution of his short-lived marriage in 1816, Byron left England amid rumours of infidelity, sodomy, and incest.

In self-imposed exile in Italy Byron completed Childe Harold and Don Juan. He also took a great interest in Armenian culture, writing of the oppression of the Armenian people under Ottoman rule; and in 1823, he aided Greece in its quest for independence from Turkey by fitting out the Greek navy at his own expense.

Two centuries of references to, and depictions of Byron in literature, music, and film began even before his death in 1824.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Destruction of Sennacherib

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0880011815
• ISBN 13: 9780880011815
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 113