TOP70-DES67
This Old Poem #70:
Lord Byron’s Stanzas For Music
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 11/1/03

  Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) is doubtlessly 1 of the most overrated poets of all-time. He’s been called a humorist- yet (like William Shakespeare) his poems are not funny. He’s been called a satirist- yet little wit abounds. He’s been said to have written epic poems, but that’s fallacious as well. Basically, Byron was a lesser version of the enfant terrible popularized later in the 19th century by French poet Arthur Rimbaud. In truth, he was to Percy Bysshe Shelley & John Keats what Adrienne Rich was to Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton- a mediocrity (at best) that rode along the coattails of better poets. Here’s his tale- culled from several online sites:

  LB’s romantic versifying made him an icon in Victorian England. He pursued romantic adventures, even though his brief life was a sort of unwitting farce. LB came from a long line of philanderers & idiots. His father was 1. His mother was vain & self-indulgent. George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron, was born in London at 16 Holles Street, Cavendish Square, on the January 22nd 1788. LB’s right leg & foot suffered from infantile paralysis. The death of a great-uncle in1798 gave him his title & money. But LB seems to have suffered some form of emotional abuse from his mother by being forced to wear dresses in childhood. For years this was thought to have ‘caused’ his later homosexuality.
  LB was highly educated- with prep schools & colleges littering his life. He fell in love, at 16, to a distant cousin- Mary Anne Chaworth. Nothing came of it. He raised hell in his stay at Cambridge. By 1807 his 1st book of juvenile poetry was published. In 1809 LB took his place in the House of Lords. He then spent months jaunting about Europe. By January 2nd, 1815 he married Isabella Milbanke, & they lived together for about a year. They had a daughter named Ada. Isabella left him on January 15th, 1816. After the divorce Byron left England & never returned. He headed for Greece & financed 1 of the warring Greek groups during a revolution. For the next 8 years his health dogged him, even as he unwavered in his support for his Greek loyalists. He died at 6 p.m. on April 10th, 1824. The Greeks mourned him. He was buried beneath the church of Huchnall-Torkard on July 16th, 1824. He was refused burial in Westminster Abbey. There is not a bust of him in Poets' Corner.

  His most famous poem is the ‘supposed epic’, Don Juan. It is seen as an attack on Romantic idealism, a manifesto of love, a satire, a Biblical analogue, an early example of Confessionalism, & a nihilistic smash at the world. While LB attacks pretension he also endorses it in the overlong & dull poem. Yet he also attacked William Wordsworth as abstruse, Samuel Taylor Coleridge as misguided, & Robert Southey as a hack- amongst others. But the poem is a long bore.
  Yet, LB wrote some good- if not great- poems. Here’s his most famous, 1 everyone knows:

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft. so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

  Yes, the poem is larded with clichés. But, it has a good music- it’s structurally sound, & does have a Classical appeal. Not so with the titular clichéfest:

Stanzas For Music

There be none of Beauty's daughters
    With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
    Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving
     Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
     As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

  Where to start? About the only good thing the poem has going for it is concision- only 2 stanzas & 16 lines. Let us forget about the trite love poem themes & descriptions; let’s hit the actual ‘music’ of the poem. It’s good, solid- but nothing to write home over. So- then- what is the virtue of the poem? None. The 1st 4 lines attempt connection with a lost mythic past. Lines 5 & 6  are standard ascription of divine qualities to a particular quality of the Beloved. Lines 7 & 8 are merely overwritten extensions of an already trite theme. Stanza 2’s 1st ½  is more clichés, & the last 4 lines are more banal love clichés. Yet, this is 1 of LB’s most famous poems. Let’s see what a little tweaking of a few key words can do to subvert & improve the poem: 

Stanzas For Music

There be none of Beauty's daughters
    With a magic to see;
Like the music on the waters
    Is thy fleet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still with dreaming,
As the lull'd winds seem scheming:

And the midnight moon is weaving
     Her bright chain o'er the sleep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
     As an infant's slow creep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and implore thee;
With a full but swift emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's notion.

  Let’s compare the word changes- line-by-line. In line 2 ‘like thee’ becomes ‘to see’. The cliché is subdued, if not eliminated. In line 4 ‘sweet’ becomes ‘fleet’- the cliché becomes an interesting choice of description- why is the voice fleet? Is that why it’s magic? The stanza end changes from:

The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:

  to:

 

The waves lie still with dreaming,
As the lull'd winds seem scheming:

 

  Still with dreaming is an apparent oxymoron, yet it’s literally not. The last line improves because they are now scheming while dreaming, rather than gleaming and dreaming. While the 1st stanza is not a magnificent new foray into virgin territory it is still improved over the original.
  In stanza 2 the ‘deep’ becomes the ‘sleep’. Instead of moon & ocean imagery we get the slightly more interesting sleep connection. But the real interesting turn in the poem comes from the switch of ‘asleep’ to slow creep’. That change adds dread to the poem- be it the dread of love or of sleep is no matter because it ups the ante in a way the original does not. ‘Adore’ becomes the more urgent ‘implore’- stress still rising….Then the ‘soft’ emotion becomes ‘swift’- still more heart-quickening. The change of ‘ocean’ to ‘notion’ returns the poem to an act of dream or ideation, rather than a banality- which was the original.
  Is the poem great? No. But it is worth reading again, now. That was not true with the original. Nor was it true with its original poet. C’est la vie (or would that be mort?).

Final Score: (1-100):

Lord Byron’s Stanzas For Music: 50
TOP’s Stanzas For Music: 70

Bookmark and Share