5

10

15

And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill - yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell;
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are;

even I

Regained my freedom with a sigh.

LORD BYRON.

HELPS TO STUDY

This poem is based on the experience of François de Bonnivard, a patriot of Geneva, who made an unsuccessful attempt to defend that city against the Duke of Savoy. Byron ascribes the punishment to religious as well as political persecution. The Castle of Chillon was old in the sixteenth century when Bonnivard was imprisoned, and it still stands on the shores of Lake Geneva (Leman).

The poem is divided into fourteen stanzas or sections. After you have read the poem through carefully, look it over by sections, and determine the subject of each section. You will then have a complete plan or outline of the poem.

1. Who is supposed to be speaking? 2. For what reason was he put in prison? 3. How many brothers had he? 4. How many were imprisoned?

5. Where is the Castle of Chillon? 6. Describe the dungeon. 7. Compare the prisoner's two brothers. 8. In section VI what lines impressed you most? 9. Which brother died first? 10. What caused his death? 11. What is the meaning of the next to last line in section VIII? 12. What state of mind is described in section IX? 13. What brought the prisoner back to a fresh interest 14. What change in his condition is described in section XI? 15. How did the prisoner obtain a view of the Alps? 16. What effects of his long imprisonment are shown in the last section?

in life?

17. After you

19. Can you

have studied the poem, recall the passages that have most affected you. 18. Turn again to three of these. Which are they? give any reasons why they remained vividly in your memory? other poems by Lord Byron have you read?

20. What

Chillon (she-yon'), François (fran-swä'), Bonnivard (bon-i-vär'), Leman (la-mon'), banned, Gothic, assuage, boon, guise, inured, hermitage.

LORD BYRON

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), was a man of great but undisciplined powers. As a boy, he was hottempered, vindictive, morbidly sensitive about his lameness, and a little proud of his handsome face. At ten he became the sixth Baron Byron and inherited a bankrupt estate. At 5 twenty-one he left England for a long voyage about the Mediterranean, and three years later on his return to England he published two cantos of Childe Harold, a poem dealing with the scenes of his travels. As he himself said, he awoke the next morning to find himself famous.

For the remaining twelve years of his life he was one of

Z

10

the most talked-about men in the world. He did many things which he afterwards came to regret, his marriage was not a happy one; and many stories were told of his dissipation and extravagance. In 1816 he bade farewell to 5 England forever, and henceforth lived in Switzerland and Italy. During these later years he wrote constantly and rapidly, and with increasing power.

Byron had been born the year before the French people stormed the Bastille prison and began the great Revolution. 10 His youth had seen that Revolution which promised so much for human liberty lead to bloodshed and horror and finally to the rule of Napoleon. By the time Byron was twenty-seven, Napoleon had run his course, had conquered Europe, and in turn had been conquered, and the old king15 doms and tyrannies had been restored. It was then that Byron's poetry rang through all Europe, a cry for liberty and a protest against tyranny of every kind. He attacked society, reviled kings, praised patriots, and sought to express the spirit of human freedom that resents all bonds and 20 shackles whether on body or mind.

In 1823 Byron became interested in the cause of the Greeks, who were struggling for independence from the Turks. He gave money liberally to their cause and finally went to Greece to fight with the patriots. 25 birthday he wrote of his past failures.

There on his thirty-sixth

If thou regrett'st thy youth, why live?

The land of honorable death

Is here: - up to the field, and give
Away thy breath.

Seek out, less often sought than found
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose the ground,
And take thy rest.

5 Three months later he died stricken with fever.

Every

lover of poetry and every lover of freedom mourned. Tenny

son was then a boy of fifteen.

the world was at an end,"

"Byron was dead! I thought

he said long afterward. "I

thought everything was over and finished for every one— 10 that nothing else mattered. I remember I walked out alone and carved 'Byron is dead' into the sandstones."