[Julie]

Most people are familiar with at least the first four lines of this poem. Byron is rarely considered in the top-tier of Romantic poets, losing place to poets like Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats.

Is that deserved? And is the fame of this poem justified, do you think?

She Walks in Beauty--George Gordon, Lord Byron 1788–1824


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 mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less
Had half impaired 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.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

[A. E. Stallings]

Er, both I think. That is, the first four lines are worthy of their immortality, and then...

I think Byron's reputation is actually rising, as a satirist and comic genius (with Don Juan).

Alicia

[A. E. Stallings]

I feel like a Sneech with no stars upon thars. When do I get a star, durn it? Alex?

[Julie]

Originally posted by A. E. Stallings:
Er, both I think. That is, the first four lines are worthy of their immortality, and then...

I think Byron's reputation is actually rising, as a satirist and comic genius (with Don Juan).
Alicia

I recently began Don Juan for the first time. It is delightful. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in satirical or comic verse.

Julie

[Christopher Mulrooney]

The nadir of Byron's fortunes must have come in 1966, when Auden pronounced him among the "comic poets": "Moore (especially in his political poems), Praed, Hood, Barham, Lear, and Carroll (slightly to one side), W.S. Gilbert, J.K. Stephen, Calverley, and in this century the best of Chesterton and Belloc, not to mention the anonymous host of limerick writers" (quite forgetting his redoubtable influence on Pushkin, Poe and Browning), as Byron had denounced "the Lakers":

Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try
'Gainst you the question with posterity.

And yet Byron himself helped Christabel into print, and wrote to Coleridge of it, "the wildest and finest I ever heard in that kind of composition... all took a hold on my imagination which I shall never wish to shake off. I mention this, not for the sake of boring you with compliments, but as a prelude to the hope that this poem is or is to be in the volumes you are now about to publish. I do not know that even "Love" or the "Antient Mariner" are so impressive—and to me there are few things in our tongue beyond these two productions."

Auden was, I suppose, trying to take the mickey out of the Byronic myth (his arguments could just as well suit Chaucer), which is Yronic in that his reading of Van Gogh's letters appears not to have enlightened him on the Van Gogh myth, and when you are speaking of the Byronic one you are referring to a man who wrote to Thomas Moore, "I have nearly (quite three) four new cantos of Don Juan ready. I obtained permission from the female Censor Morum of my morals to continue it, provided it were immaculate; so I have been as decent as need be", and was ever a poet more industrious?

This poem is evidently great from its first four lines, then he gives you two more in that first stanza, which set his chiaroscuro; the second stanza prepares his colors—in all, a full-length portrait, a really painterly study, and the most of it is music.

Or look at it as having been invented as gradations of tone from dark to light, and through-composed like De Kooning or "The Raven" (as Poe said and Ravel professed to "firmly believe, Mallarmé to the contrary. As a matter of fact, as regards musical technique, my teacher has certainly been Edgar Allan Poe.").

"We either feel beauty or we don't," says Borges. "We feel poetry as we feel a woman's proximity, or as we feel a mountain or a bay."



[This message has been edited by Christopher Mulrooney (edited February 28, 2001).]

[James Sutton]

Byron's reputation is secure; is yours?

[Alan Sullivan]

My college profs must have taken their cue from Auden, because during the late Sixties the only Byron they pushed was "Don Juan," which I found pretty inaccessible at the time. Years later I revisited some passages and enjoyed them a lot more (anyone who would rhyme nunnery and gunnery...), but I haven't been patient enough to take the whole thing straight through again.

This poem creates an expectation of a more complex portrait with its great opening lines that mingle light and dark. Then it disappoints with a very conventional embodiment of goodness. The result is neither a great nor smelly poem, but a famous one.

Alan Sullivan

[robert mezey]

It's just another Romantic lyric, better than some,
worse than many. Not my favorite kind of poetry, and
it's hard to think of any other Byron lyrics that are
any better. (Oh, there's one, one beauty: "So we'll
go no more a roving," especially sung.) But Byron,
although like Shelley a loathsome son-of-a-bitch, is
truly one of the great comic poets. I must admit that
Don Juan is awfully long, but it's also a lot
of pleasure. LB is also witty and enjoyable in his
Popean mode, in The Vision of Judgment and English
Bards & Scotch Reviewers.

[Golias]

I have not sufficient restraint to let pass a discussion of Lord Byron in terms of comic verse without presenting, for the few who may not have read it, this tribute by the immortal Julia Ann Moore, sometimes called the Sweet Singer of Michigan:


SKETCH OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE

"Lord Byron" was an Englishman
A poet I believe,
His first works in old England
Was poorly received.
Perhaps it was "Lord Byron's" fault
And perhaps it was not.
His life was full of misfortunes,
Ah, strange was his lot.

The character of "Lord Byron"
Was of a low degree,
Caused by his reckless conduct,
And bad company.
He sprung from an ancient house,
Noble, but poor, indeed.
His career on earth, was marred
By his own misdeeds.

Generous and tender hearted,
Affectionate by extreme,
In temper he was wayward,
A poor "Lord" without means;
Ah, he was a handsome fellow
With great poetic skill,
His great intellectual powers
He could use at his will.

He was a sad child of nature,
Of fortune and of fame;
Also sad child to society,
For nothing did he gain
But slander and ridicule,
Throughout his native land.
Thus the "poet of the passions,"
Lived, unappreciated, man.

Yet at the age of 24,
"Lord Byron" then had gained
The highest, highest, pinacle
Of literary fame.
Ah, he had such violent passions
They was beyond his control,
Yet the public with its justice,
Sometimes would him extol.

Sometimes again "Lord Byron"
Was censured by the press,
Such obloquy, he could not endure,
So he done what was the best.
He left his native country,
This great unhappy man;
The only wish he had, "'tis said,"
He might die, sword in hand.

He had joined the Grecian Army;
This man of delicate frame;
And there he died in a distant land,
And left on earth his fame.
"Lord Byron's" age was 36 years,
Then closed the sad career,
Of the most celebrated "Englishman"
Of the nineteenth century.

G.

[RCL]

Golias, thanks for posting this. Though I lived about half my life in Michigan, I never read her (and in some ways, I'm glad), but I do like the way she takes on that old sophistry, "Byron was a bad man; therefore, Byron was a bad poet," and dismisses it.

------------------
Ralph