Lord Byron - Child Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Third

George Gordon, his father left him and his mother early and his great-uncle died childless Gordon inherited his estate, making him Lord Byron. He was one of the most popular poets of his time. Lord Byron's Child Harold's Pilgrimage had 2 other Cantos that are not mentioned in the reading but are semi-autobiographical. In stanza 94 Byron describes nature as a subliminal illusion to his own life and others lives. This particular stanza describes his separation from his wife. "Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between heights which appear as lovers who have parted." His wife is one mountain and he is the other, the Rhone river which runs in between may symbolize the distance that is shared between them or more deeply the emotional difference they share, something that separates them. The sad part about this line is that Lord Byron sees the other mountain's top through the valley but cannot reach it, he thinks about his wife but cannot accompany her. In stanza 97 it reads:

Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,  --  could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe -- into one word,   
And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.

This stanza is very powerful and brings up a lot of emotional turmoil inside me, which comes from
my shear sympathy for Lord Byron's character, who presumably is himself in this poem. He throws
"soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings" into his writings and does a great job of telling us exactly how
he feels. But yet he cannot speak to which he is trying to say, he can only describe it by using one
word, "lightning", which if you have ever seen it, gives off a great and powerful light, that anyone can
see, but yet it is voiceless and "sheathing it as a sword", or hidden beneath a veil. The thunder which
follows lightning is always seconds later, but I think the writer feels the lightning is a good allusion to
how he feels in this poem and how, with all of his talent as a writer, cannot convey his feelings into
words.

Lord Byron had a lot of fame in his day, and to better or worse it stuck with him. In lines 1045-1057
of this poem:

Fame is the thirst of youth, -- but I am not
So young as to regard men's frown or smile,
As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot;
I stood and stand alone, -- remember'd or forgot.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flatter'd its rank breath, nor bow'd    
To its idolatries a patient knee, --
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles, -- nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

Lord Byron seems to detest his fame, but not denounce it. He accepts that he is in the public eye
and is loved by a lot of his countrymen. But as he says, "Fame is the thirst of youth, -But I am not" and
here you can see Byron's realization that some would kill for his kind of fame, the youth of his time, but
he is not young, or so he thinks, and does not thirst for such a status. In the lines, "In worship of an echo;
in the crowd, They could not deem me one of such; I stood Among them, but not of them; in a shroud."
Here Lord Byron is accepting that he is worshiped for his prose, but in a crowd he stands among them, but
he cannot relate to all of them, or any of them. He stands in a "shroud o thoughts which were not their thoughts"
so he sees that people worship him for what he has said, the thoughts he has given off, that they take
into their own lives and try to make their own experiences relevant. He seems to detest this fame and then
goes straight from detesting it into a self-gloating phase, "I stood and stand alone, -remember'd or forgot"
I think Byron wants to be remembered by his readers, but he realizes that he is alone, no matter how
many people would remember his poems.

I cannot relate to such fame and heartbreak that Lord Byron has experienced, I am only 21 years old with
no fame to speak of. But I can see many celebrities of today, who wish for fame all their lives, then detest
it as they have received the love and adoration of their fans. Lady Gaga has been in the news recently,
she was seen at a Met's game wearing a bra and a jacket, and then she gets upset when she gets
attention. Some people seem to ask for the attention and then renounce it when they have received it. I see
a little Lord Byron in a lot of celebrities on TV and Movies. Maybe they should read some of his writings and
see how thankful they should be and either choose to gloat or feel sorry for themselves, doing both
seems a little childish.