拜伦生平简介(英文版)及部分诗作

Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was as famous in his lifetime for his personality cult as for his poetry. He created the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable event in his past. Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the son of Captain John Byron, and Catherine Gordon. He was born with a club-foot and became extreme sensitivity about his lameness. Byron spent his early childhood years in poor surroundings in Aberdeen, where he was educated until he was ten. After he inherited the title and property of his great-uncle in 1798, he went on to Dulwich, Harrow, and Cambridge, where he piled up debts and aroused alarm with bisexual love affairs. Staying at Newstead in 1802, he probably first met his half-sister, Augusta Leigh with whom he was later suspected of having an incestuous relationship.

In 1807 Byron's first collection of poetry, Hours Of Idleness appeared. It received bad reviews. The poet answered his critics with the satire English Bards And Scotch Reviewers in 1808. Next year he took his seat in the House of Lords, and set out on his grand tour, visiting Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece, and the Aegean. Real poetic success came in 1812 when Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818). He became an adored character of London society; he spoke in the House of Lords effectively on liberal themes, and had a hectic love-affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron's The Corsair (1814), sold 10,000 copies on the first day of publication. He married Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815, and their daughter Ada was born in the same year. The marriage was unhappy, and they obtained legal separation next year.

When the rumors started to rise of his incest and debts were accumulating, Byron left England in 1816, never to return. He settled in Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Claire Clairmont, who became his mistress. There he wrote the two cantos of Childe Harold and "The Prisoner Of Chillon". At the end of the summer Byron continued his travels, spending two years in Italy. During his years in Italy, Byron wrote Lament Of Tasso, inspired by his visit in Tasso's cell in Rome, Mazeppa and started Don Juan, his satiric masterpiece. While in Ravenna and Pisa, Byron became deeply interested in drama, and wrote among others The Two Foscari, Sardanapalaus, Cain, and the unfinished Heaven And Earth.

After a long creative period, Byron had come to feel that action was more important than poetry. He armed a brig, the Hercules, and sailed to Greece to aid the Greeks, who had risen against their Ottoman overlords. However, before he saw any serious military action, Byron contracted a fever from which he died in Missolonghi on 19 April 1824. Memorial services were held all over the land. Byron's body was returned to England but refused by the deans of both Westminster and St Paul's. Finally Byron's coffin was placed in the family vault at Hucknall Torkard, near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

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When We Two Parted

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.

The dew of the morning

Sank chill on my brow -

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame:

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,

A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o'er me -

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well: -

Long, long shall I rue thee

Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met -

In silence I grieve

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee? -

With silence and tears.

She Walks in Beauty

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! Solitude

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.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,

And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!

None that, with kindred consciousness endued,

If we were not, would seem to smile the less

Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;

This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

A Spirit Passed Before Me

From Job

A spirit passed before me: I beheld

The face of immortality unveiled -

Deep sleep came down on every eye save mine - And there it stood, -all formless -but divine:

Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake;

And as my damp hair stiffened, thus it spake:

"Is man more just than God? Is man more pure Than He who deems even Seraphs insecure? Creatures of clay -vain dwellers in the dust!

The moth survives you, and are ye more just? Things of a day! you wither ere the night, Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!" Stanzas For Music

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;

And the midnight moon is weaving

Her bright chain o'er the deep,

Whose breast is gently heaving

As an infant's asleep:

So the spirit bows before thee,

To listen and adore thee,

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean.