Image sources: 1, 2
Outline
His Life and Byron (BBC)
Childe Harolds Pilgrimage Introduction
Excerpts for Analysis
She Walks in Beauty & When We Two Parted
For Next Week
His Life (1)
Ada Lovelace
Canto 3: Main Themes
War, Transience, Injustice, Nature
Description of Waterloo leads Byron to expound on
characteristic themes: the vicissitudes of earthly
existence, the transiency of joy, the evils of injustice, and
the futility of war. But the chief interest lies in the attitude
to nature. Through Shelley, Byron had come briefly to
adopt a Wordsworthian stance, and here he sees nature
not just as a refuge from the cold indifference of society
but as a life form which is fused with and a part of his own
being. Yet unlike Wordsworth, even now Byron often
found in nature not so much a mystical communion as a
symbol of his own mind, the ``loftiest peaks most wrapt
in clouds and snow'' (stanza 45) betokening the grand
isolation of the romantic genius. (Mellown)
Childe Harold & Byron
6.
Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do now.
What am I? Nothing but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow
Mixed with thy Spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings
dearth. source
Harold:8-16;
52 55 (last allusion to Harold)
Themes Romantic Hero 7-16
14.
Like the Chaldean, he could watch the Stars,
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams; and Earth, and earth-born jars,
And human frailties, were forgotten quite:
Could he have kept his Spirit to that flight
He had been happy; but this Clay will sink
Its spark immortal, envying it the light
To which it mounts, as if to break the link
That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.
Themes Exile in Melancholy 70
68
Lake Leman woos me with its chrystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The Stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:
There is too much of Man here, to look through
With a fit mind the might which I behold;
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old, source
Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their
fold.
Nature 96
Canto 3: Discussion Questions
(reference)
She Walks In Beauty
SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
She Walks In Beauty
MV --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVfQLggcM7k
Byron ~ She Walks In Beauty ~ poem with text
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_zCOJOgd4U
"When We Two Parted (1816)