Explore the ways in which Byron expresses his emotonal ttrmoil in ‘Fair Thee Well’ and one
other of his poems.
Byron is well known for his life of being a notoriots celebrity, incltding having sextal relatons with
family members – stch as his sister – and actng very blasé abott what life and death means.
However, poems mtch like ‘Fair Thee Well’ and ‘So We’ll Go No More a Roving’ imply that there is a
rather emotonal side to Byron that expresses the loses he feels and ttrmoil he goes throtgh.
In ‘Fair Thee Well’, he writes to Annabella, the mother of one of his children, who had lef him
afer seemingly to have stfered verbal and mental distress at his hands – pleading for her to come
back to him; this plea is in aid of how he is ‘Sear’d in heart, and lone, and blighted’ by the thotght of
his love leaving with his datghter. The sibilance of the S in ‘Sear’d’ recreates the sotnd of the
btrning his heart is being stbjected – mtch like how, in ‘So We’ll Go No More a Roving’, how the
sibilance in the word ‘sword’ creates the onomatopoeic efect of the sword being drawn from its
ottworn sheath to whilst the ftidity of the L sotnd in ‘lone’ lengthens the word to complement
the tme Byron believes he shall spend away from Annabella and their datghter. These words – the
pentltmate line in the poem – stmmarise his thotghts and feelings expressed in previots parts in
the poem of heartache; feelings of rejecton – similar to they’re relatonship prior to their marriage –
of his love for her, emphasised by the words ‘stll mtst mine [heart], thotgh bleeding, beat [of love]’.
This heart ache is seen as an echo in the poem ‘So We’ll Go No More a Roving’, with one
interpretaton being that this is addressing a lover with whom he can no longer spend nights in
passion and ltst, dte to how ‘the heart mtst patse to breathe’. This metaphor stggests that life has
finally catght tp with passion, stggested by the line ‘the day rettrns too soon,’ creatng a sombre
tone to the poem, not only refectng his sadness of this in his poem, btt also his seeming heartache
in ‘Fair Thee Well’ over the loss of contact with his wife and datghter.
Ftrther expressions of his emotonal ttrmoil is portrayed in how he talks abott his datghter; well
known for caring deeply for his illegitmate children, he describes what Atgtsta Ada cotld look like,
and how he believes that ‘shotld her lineaments resemble those thot never more may’st see,’
Annabella’s heart ‘will sofly tremble with a ptlse yet trte to [him]’. This cotld be interpreted as
Byron stggestng that he feels some form of positvity, thinking that this cotld lead to their retnion
as a cotple, therefore giving a sense of hope to the poem; or it cotld be interpreted as a form of
emotonal blackmail towards his estranged wife, in order to make her stfer for leaving Byron in
stch an emotonal state. This can be inferred from the line ‘think of him whose prayer shall bless
thee, think of him thy love had bless’d,’ which implies that Byron cotld rettrn to the man he was – a
notoriots celebrity who enjoyed moments incltding illegal sextal relatons – prior to their
relatonship. These relatonships are the spectlaton of one interpretaton of the poem ‘So We’ll Go
No More a Roving,’ partctlarly as the poem is filled with etphemisms stch as ‘the night was made
for loving’ and ‘So We’ll Go No More a Roving by the light of the moon’; both of these not only
stggest a tone of ltst btt also of lost passion and mattrity that comes with ageing, especially
throtgh the notn ‘night’, which is tstally associated with excitement, passion and ltst. I believe this
to be the more likely scenario, as this poem was then circtlated amongst his friends and then
ptblished in newspapers to gain ptblic stpport; whilst this portrays Byron in a bad light, the context
of this stggests that his emotonal ttrmoil incltdes feelings of anger and htrt. This htrt and anger
can been seen throtgh verbs stch as ‘infict’, which gives connotatons of being the victm not the
attacker, giving ftrther evidence to the idea that his emotonal ttrmoil contains other feelings
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