Lord Byron
1788-1824
What can I say about Byron that has not been said before? I fear his reputation as Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know', as he was famously described, frequently gets in the way of his poetry. Inclined to be less quotable than Keats and Shelley, this should not imply his writing was of a lesser quality. Many of his shorter works are sublime, She Walks in Beauty may be the most well known example although there are others from the Hebrew Melodies, in particular, that come to mind. His longer works too are the equal of any poet writing in the English language. Don Juan is the most famous and a work of extraordinary vigour. It is not a quick read and browsing will give no more than a faint flavour of the work.
The shorter poems are contained in the youthful Hours of Idleness and those from the mature poet may be found in Occasional Pieces and Hebrew Melodies.
This is an ongoing project of Byron's work and ultimately is intended to be a comprehensive collection, if not the collected poetical works.
Hours of Idleness is a youthful Byron and the first flowering of poetical genius. Hints of the great works to come can be found among many of these pieces, as well as a little rawness that was scathingly attacked by that famous review in the Edinburgh Review that was to lead to the satirical work English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
The Giaour, The Corsair and Lara have similarly inspired themes yet with some vivid contrasts. Mazeppa, too, is in the same vein. From these poems came the Byronic hero.
Manfred is a dramatic poem with some of Byron's richest verse. There is also a good deal of argument as to whether it is evidence of his alleged (and hotly disputed) incest with his half sister Augusta. In the absence of any more detailed account by either party other than that of the embittered Lady Byron's, it is unlikely that the real story will ever be known.
Byron was usually at his best and this can be seen in the scathing The Vision of Judgement, first published in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, and the outstanding unfinished work Don Juan.
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Selected Poems by George Gordon Byron
The
Love Poems of Lord Byron
Byron
: Poems
Don Juan