Customer Reviews

Selected Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

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This is a great collection of mostly short poems by one of the greatest poets in memory. beginning with "Damaetas" and ending with "On this Day I complete my Thirty-sixth year" these 30 poems, in chronological order, represent a great portion of Byron's work, including portions of Childe Herold's Pilgramage, hebrew melodies, don juan, and manfred. great as an introduction to byron.

Handsome, rich, titled, adventuresome, free-spirited, and even scandalous, Lord Byron was also the most prolific and versatile of the romantic poets. In this collection I was continually surprised as Byron excelled in one genre after another. I give a few examples:

I Would I Were A Careless Child recalls an idyllic life of childhood in Scotland. I wondered whether Lord Byron was truly sincere in his request to 'take back this name of splendid sound'.

Contrastingly, in the short poem Damaetas we encounter an untrustworthy, manipulative child 'versed in hypocrisy' who is soon 'old in the world though scarcely broke from school'.

Stanzas To A Lady On Leaving England tells of an enduring love: 'have loved so long, and loved but one'. Nonetheless, soon thereafter Byron playfully describes The Girl of Cadiz, a beautiful Spanish maiden. We also meet Maid of Athens, Ere We Part and the innocent She Walks in Beauty.

To my surprise, the love poem When We Two Parted devolves into betrayal, broken vows, and deceit.

The Prisoner of Chillon is a chilling fable, a narrative of three brothers, chained to dungeon pillars, and dying slowly. The horrific poem Darkness is imaginative terror worthy of Edgar Allan Poe. And don't be misled by the apparently peaceful beginning to the macabre When the Moon is on the Wave (from Act 1, Scene 1, of Manfred).

The long narrative Beppo is totally different, a playful and amusing story that is enjoyable to read again and again. Dear Doctor, I Have Read Your Play is a humorous, rambling rejection note from a publisher, addressed to John William Polidori, Byron's friend and fellow poet.

I especially liked the two short, sentimental poems So We'll Go No More A Roving and My Boat Is on the Shore.

The Vision of Judgment is a lengthy, humorous satire that is still fun to read today, even though some references to topical events and political personalities are now unfamiliar. (It was probably less amusing to those individuals targeted by Byron.). In contrast, the short poem, Who Killed John Keats?, is sharp satire, not at all amusing.

The thirty-one poems in this 100 page Dover Thrift Edition are quite enjoyable. After reading this short collection, apparently only a small fraction of Lord Byron's creative work, I suspect that you will have little choice but to become better acquainted with Byron's poetry.

This is a great collection of thirty of Byron's short poems, arranged in chronological order. Everyone should own at least one collection of Byron's work, and at this price, why not make this the one?

In his day Byron was the rage of Europe. He was the romantic hero, wild, impulsive, able to indulge his lusts and loves to the end, revolutionary, tormented and tormenting, confined to no law but that of his own impulse and nature. And also a tremendously powerful and skilled writer in many different forms. His fluency and strength enabled him to produce the novel-like longer poems, "Don Juan" and "The Prisoner of Chillon" which outside the academic world are not much read today. Perhaps what readers today most know are some of the beautiful shorter lyrics in this anthology, "She walks in Beauty like the night" being the most famous of them.



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I am not a fan of the English Romantics but I will make a big exception for Lord Byron. He's wild! "Don Juan," parts of which are included in this book, is bawdy and hilarious. Keep in mind that the poem was not considered fit for young ladies to read when it came out...are you tempted yet?

The Dover Thrift Editions are surprisingly well-constructed - they'll outlast, say, your Oxford World Classics paperbacks - and the poems are usually well-chosen. And they're....cheap!