I went through the full seven volumes of Byron's complete poetry many years ago and was quite devastated when, by some accident, all of the highlights on my Kindle were deleted. Ever since then I have made it a point to keep my highlights backed up to cloud storage. I loved the time I spent with Byron, and can understand why he was revered the world over during his time. I often wonder at his fall from prominence since, though. My only thought is that it fell at the same time that narrative poetry (much less narrative poetry in meter and rhyme!) fell out of vogue. Still, I would argue Byron is the best narrative poet we had since Milton, maybe since Chaucer, and his tales still hold up remarkably well. I remember being quite captivated by Don Juan, Manfred, and Cain especially. Many of his others read more like typical adventure novels of the period, though all of them were still quite entertaining with more than their share of highlights.
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