The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2

by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, Lord Byron, Rowland Edmund Prothero

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Genres: Poetry

588 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1864

About the author

Ernest Hartley Coleridge (1846–1920) was a British literary scholar and poet. He was son of Derwent Coleridge and grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Coleridge was educated at Highgate School, Sherborne School and Balliol College, Oxford. He did scholarly work on his grandfather’s manuscripts, being the last of the Coleridges involved in their editing. He also took part in the campaign to buy the Coleridge Cottage in Nether Stowey for the nation.

Reviews

[K.S. Trenten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of my complaints about this particular book have to do with this Kindle edition. It got stuck. It wasn’t always clear which poem I was reading, whether I was in the middle of Child Harold or a different one altogether. Nor was it clear whom the speaker was or what he was doing. Clues as to the location were dropped in an emotional reaction to a historic site, a location, and the flight of fancy each would invoke. These flights soared to dramatic heights, punctuated by a heartfelt melancholy or ecstacy, exquisitely expressed. Passion drives these poems, which find the right words to fit their feelings. Plus there is an index/guide explaining the back story behind the many objects and sites described, offering up a little myth and history to accompany the poems.

There were times when Byron irritated me with his insistence on regarding women in a limited, idealized sphere even when his own real life acquaintances offered up much richer material (like Mary Shelley and Lady Caroline Lamb). Perhaps he wished escape from this knowledge? I can’t help but smile at his enthusiasm, his sarcasm in the face of hypocrisy and stupidity, along with his romantic spirit which finds a voice in his poetry, no matter what his personal circumstances were at the time. For all of these things, plus a poetry which achieves a life of its own independent of my own knowledge of the poet (I’ll admit he’s a subject of some fascination of mine), this book gets four stars.

[Marios]

"Ancient of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that were:
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
They won, and pass'd away - is this the whole?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power."