From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron poem summary, British Literature - II, B.A English Literature, 1st Year 2nd Semester

  BA English Literature

 [1^st Year, 2^nd Semester]

Core Paper V: BRITISH LITERATURE

UNIT 1: Poetry

1.6. “From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” By Lord Byron

About Poem:

‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ by Lord Byron is a narrative poem separated into four parts. 

The poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage describes the journey of Childe Harold, whose experiences correspond to Byron’s own. On 2 July 1809 Byron left England along with a Cambridge friend John Cam Hobhouse, his servant Fletcher and his ‘little page’, Robert Rushton. On 6 July they reached Lisbon.

The first two cantos describe the pilgrim, surfeited with his past life of sin and pleasure, finding diversions in his journey across Portugal, Spain, the Ionian Islands and Albania. Byron returned to Newstead in England in 1811 and the first two cantos were published in 1812. It was received enthusiastically by London society and lauched Byron as a major poet of England. ‘I woke one morning’ Byron wrote in March 1812, ‘and found myself famous.’

In April 1816 Byron left England, never again to return to it. He went to Geneva in Switzerland where he met Shelley and completed the third canto of Childe Harold, which was published the same year. It describes the pilgrim’s travels to Belgium, the Rhine, the Alps and Jura. Childe Harold also reflects on the Spanish War, and the Battle of Waterloo (1815) at which, Napoleon suffered his final defeat against the United Kingdom.

In October 1816, Byron left Geneva for Venice with Hobhouse. In the fourth canto he speaks directly about his experiences in Italy, his meditations on time and history, on Venice and Petrarch, Ferrara and Tasso, Florence and Boccaccio, Rome and her great men ending with the symbol of the sea. Byron had an abiding interest in the mountains and the sea. The extract that you are going to read is a meditation on the symbol of the sea.