Byron is one of the most prolific and talented poets in the Western canon. No true student of poetry could complete her studies without knowing the beauty of his words. While Byron wrote many long narrative poems such as Don Juan and Childe Harold’s
Byron is one of the most prolific and talented poets in the Western canon. No true student of poetry could complete her studies without knowing the beauty of his words. While Byron wrote many long narrative poems such as Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, my favorite of his works are his short love poems. These five lyric poems depict longing, loss, existential feelings, and a romance with nature.
Byron’s personal life was interlaced with his literary work. In most of his lyric poems, Byron used the people he knew as muses. The memorable lines, “She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies” were inspired by observing his cousin’s wife, Anne Wilmot, at a party. While he describes her lovely face and compares it to the polarities in nature, it is mostly her goodness and personality that makes her so beautiful.
With such an adventurous and controversial life, it is not surprising that most of Lord Byron’s poetry was autobiographical. His actions were considered so taboo by Western society that he had to escape England and sail to Belgium to distance himself from his failed marriage, his many affairs, and rumors of his bisexuality. According to Louis Crompton’s Byron and Greek Love, people who were gay in the 19th century kept their sexual orientation a secret because England had death penalty laws for anyone who wasn’t straight.
“To Thyrza” reflects the heartbreak Byron endured when learning about the passing of a young friend of his: John Edleston. Because of homophobia, Byron couldn’t even mourn his lost love publicly. He had to mask the gender of John by calling him a female name: “Thyrza.”
There be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull’d winds seem dreaming:
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant’s asleep:
So the sp