Lord Byron
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Robert Browning
Thomas Hardy
Charlotte Mew
Charles Causley
Seamus Heaney
Simon Armitage
Carol Ann Duffy
Owen Sheers
Andrew Waterhouse
Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Blake
William Wordsworth
Robert Browning
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Wilfred Owen
Seamus Heaney
Ted Hughes
Simon Armitage
Carol Ann Duffy
Imtiaz Dharker
Carol Rumens
John Agard
Beatrice Garland
This is one of Lord Byron’s most serious and emotional poems. Lord Byron is well known for his poems such as Don Juan – which is a comedic epic — but here the restraint and feelings of sorrow are all the more potent because of the lack of typical Byron rebelliousness.
Today, ‘When We Two Parted’ i...
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
Sunk 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.
It may be possible, Byron was likely to be bisexual, but it is not likely this poem is about that. You would have you provide evidence to state so. The poem is generally believed to be about Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. Byron is believed to have written it when he heard she had taken the Duke of...