Occasional Pieces: Poetry of Lord Byron

Written by Lord Byron

Narrated by Robert Bethune

This volume of the Freshwater Seas Lord Byron set consists of 54 poems written during the years 1809-1816. Many were included in various editions of longer works, particularly the 1812 and later editions of Childe Harold; others were published in various newspapers and periodicals, especially the Morning Chronicle; a few were not published until after the author's death, sometimes long after.

The mood is as varied as were the occasions of the compositions. Quite a few echo the tone of his satires; some are merely witty bon-mots, others are more or less deeply felt expressions of emotion, ranging from perfunctory to sincere. Some show the puckish humor that makes one think that Byron and Ogden Nash were somehow cousins under the skin. Of the Romantics, it's really only Byron who shows such a comic and satiric side.

In short, here is part of the byroads-and-backwaters side of Lord Byron - poems you probably won't hear elsewhere, poems he wrote casually and sometimes never published, but poems that offer a side of him not seen elsewhere.

Public Domain (P)2010 Robert Bethune

A Freshwater Seas production.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freshwater Seas
• Release date: Sep 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781933311692

Lord Byron

Lord Byron was an English poet and the most infamous of the English Romantics, glorified for his immoderate ways in both love and money. Benefitting from a privileged upbringing, Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage upon his return from his Grand Tour in 1811, and the poem was received with such acclaim that he became the focus of a public mania. Following the dissolution of his short-lived marriage in 1816, Byron left England amid rumours of infidelity, sodomy, and incest. In self-imposed exile in Italy Byron completed Childe Harold and Don Juan. He also took a great interest in Armenian culture, writing of the oppression of the Armenian people under Ottoman rule; and in 1823, he aided Greece in its quest for independence from Turkey by fitting out the Greek navy at his own expense. Two centuries of references to, and depictions of Byron in literature, music, and film began even before his death in 1824.