Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos / Lord George Gordon Byron

If, in the month of dark December,

Leander, who was nightly wont

(What maid will not the tale remember?)

To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!

If, when the wintry tempest roared,

He sped to Hero, nothing loath,

And thus of old thy current poured,

Fair Venus! how I pity both!

When We Two Parted / Lord George Gordon Byron

When we two parted

In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted,

To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.

To Thyrza: And Thou Art Dead / Lord George Gordon Byron

And thou art dead, as young and fair

As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft and charm so rare

Too soon returned to Earth!

Though Earth received them in her bed,

And o'er the spot the crowd may tread

In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook

A moment on that grave to look.

To Thomas Moore / Lord George Gordon Byron

My boat is on the shore,

And my bark is on the sea;

But, before I go, Tom Moore,

Here's a double health to thee!

Here's a sigh to those who love me,

And a smile to those who hate;

And, whatever sky's above me,

Here's a heart for every fate.

The Giaour / Lord George Gordon Byron

A Fragment of a Turkish Tale

Byron was inspired to write this poem during his Grand Tour in the years 1810 and 1811. While in Athens, he became aware of the Turkish custom of throwing a woman found guilty of adultery into the sea wrapped in a sack. "Giaour" (Turkish: Gâvur) is an offensive Turkish word for infidel or non-believer, and is similar to the Arabic word "kafir". Byron designed the story with three narrators giving their individual point of view about the series of events. The main story is of Leila, a member of her master Hassan's harem, who loves the giaour and is killed by being drowned in the sea by Hassan. In revenge, the giaour kills him and then enters a monastery due to his remorse. The design of the story allows for contrast between Christian and Muslim perceptions of love, sex, death and the afterlife. The poem was written after Byron had become famous overnight after the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and reflects his disenchantment with fame. It also reflects the gloom, remorse and lust of two illicit love affairs, one with his half-sister Augusta Leigh and the other with Lady Frances Webster.

No breath of air to break the wave

That rolls below the Athenian's grave,

That tomb which, gleaming o'er the cliff,

First greets the homeward-veering skiff,

High o'er the land he saved in vain;

The Destruction of Sennacherib / Lord George Gordon Byron

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa / Lord George Gordon Byron

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;

The days of our youth are the days of our glory;

And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty

Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?

'Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled:

Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!

What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?

Stanzas To the Po / Lord George Gordon Byron

River, that rollest by the ancient walls,

Where dwells the lady of my love, when she

Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls

A faint and fleeting memory of me;

What if thy deep and ample stream should be

A mirror of my heart, where she may read

The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,

Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

Stanzas To Augusta / Lord George Gordon Byron

When all around grew drear and dark,

And reason half withheld her ray - 

And hope but shed a dying spark

Which more misled my lonely way;

In that deep midnight of the mind,

And that internal strife of heart,

When dreading to be deemed too kind,

The weak despair -the cold depart;

Stanzas For Music, There's Not a Joy the World Can Give / Lord George Gordon Byron

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away

When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;

'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,

But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness

Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:

The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain

The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.

Stanzas For Music / Lord George Gordon Byron

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 lulled winds seem dreaming;

Solitude / Lord George Gordon Byron

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,

To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,

And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;

To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,

With the wild flock that never needs a fold;

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;

This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

So, We'll Go No More a Roving / Lord George Gordon Byron

So, we'll go no more a roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

She Walks in Beauty / Lord George Gordon Byron

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.

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year / Lord George Gordon Byron

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,

Since others it hath ceased to move:

Yet, though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief,

Are mine alone!

On Chillon / Lord George Gordon Byron

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art;

For there thy habitation is the heart - 

The heart which love of thee alone can bind;

And when thy sons to fetters are consigned,

- To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom - 

Their country conquers with their martyrdom,

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

Oh! Snatched Away in Beauty's Bloom / Lord George Gordon Byron

Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom,

On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;

But on thy turf shall roses rear

Their leaves, the earliest of the year;

And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom:

And oft by yon blue gushing stream

Shall Sorrow lean her drooping head,

And feed deep thought with many a dream,

And lingering pause and lightly tread;

Fond wretch! as if her step disturbed the dead!

Lines, On Hearing That Lady Byron Was Ill / Lord George Gordon Byron

And thou wert sad -yet I was not with thee!

And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near;

Methought that joy and health alone could be

Where I was not -and pain and sorrow here.

And is it thus? -it is as I foretold,

And shall be more so; for the mind recoils

Upon itself, and the wrecked heart lies cold,

While heaviness collects the shattered spoils.

It is not in the storm nor in the strife

We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,

But in the after-silence on the shore,

When all is lost, except a little life.

Lines Written Beneath an Elm in the Churchyard of Harrow / Lord George Gordon Byron

Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,

Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;

Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,

With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;

With those who, scattered far, perchance deplore,

Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:

Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull / Lord George Gordon Byron

Start not -nor deem my spirit fled:

In me behold the only skull

From which, unlike a living head,

Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaffed like thee;

I died: let earth my bones resign:

Fill up -thou canst not injure me;

The worm hath fouler lips than thine.