Byron's Sardanapalus (1821)

The Dream of Sardanapalus, 1871 painting by Ford Madox Brown.

[Image source: Wikimedia . Brown's painting is in the Delaware Art Museum. I've chosen it because it really illustrates the story in Byron's play: it shows the exhausted Sardanapalus aprey to troubled dreams and anxiously watched over by Myrrha (Act IV Scene 1). Delacroix's shocking 1827 painting The Death of Sardanapalus is vastly more renowned, but he only used the Byron connection to gain publicity: Byron had toned down the king's transgressiveness, but Delacroix toned it up.]

I'm always looking for new ways to shed readers, and of all the things about Sardanapalus that I might delve into I've selected perhaps the most trivial and least interesting, namely how Byron pronounced the name "Sardanapalus". 

But before we get to Byron, Wikipedia tells us that the correct way to pronounce it is "/ˌsɑːrdəˈnæpələs/ SAR-də-NAP-ə-ləs".  That fits with the Ancient Greek "Σαρδανάπαλλος", which is how the name appeared in the Bibliotheca Historicae of Diodorus Siculus (fl. 50 BCE); it's also consistent with a hypothetical derivation from the Assyrian "Aššur-bāni-apli" (the historical king Ashurbanipal). 

When Byron wrote his blank-verse play, he could have used that pronunciation. It has the same stress-pattern as Neoptolemus or Michelangelo or indeed Michael Peverett, i.e. /-/-/, and it would slot very nicely into an iambic pentameter. 

But he didn't. Peter Cochran (link below) tells us that in Byron's play the name is pronounced “Sar-dan-a-PAY-lus”, arguing from the following line:

To share the soft hours of Sardanapalus,

(Sardanapalus, I.2.8)

on which he comments: "To make the line scan, the hero’s name must have its penultimate syllable stressed."

I was baffled, and perhaps you'll feel the same. The line just seemed rough, with clashing accents at "soft hours", and no pronunciation of Sardanapalus was going to change that.

After spending several mornings elegantly demonstrating why Cochran was wrong, I suddenly realized he was right. 

But he doesn't spell out the reasoning, so I will. It depends on understanding Byron's way of writing blank verse.

*

Byron's blank verse is often bracingly choppy (like the line in question), but underlying it are two principles that he maintains with steely regularity.

1. Every line has five accents, neither less nor more. 

The rhythm is predominantly iambic, but trochaic inversion is common, especially in the first foot but sometimes in others.

There is often (though not too often) a tension between natural and metrical accentuation, leading to the "choppiness" already mentioned. Byron seems to do this deliberately, creating the effect of speech riding above an underlying rhythm rather than staying in sync with it. 

2. Every line has either ten syllables (if the ending is masculine) or eleven syllables (if the ending is feminine). 

In Byron's verse feminine endings are common (unlike in Keats, Arnold or the Brownings). He also makes heavy use of enjambement, often ending a line with a leading word such as "from", "to" or "who".

Extra unstressed syllables (as sometimes in Robert Browning*) are not allowed. 

Some lines may appear to have extra syllables, but on inspection this is because Byron makes full use of traditional elisions. Words like "even", "heaven", "fallen" and "frozen" are treated as one syllable. "Natural" is treated as two syllables. Common word groups like "He hath", "To have", "Thou hast", "I had" and "I will" are crushed into one syllable (these all occur in the first few pages of Act I). When "The" and "to" precede an unstressed vowel they are usually elided... and so on. 

*Examples of extra syllables in Robert Browning. These lines have eleven syllables though the ending is masculine.

That you disfigure the subject, fray the face,

(The Ring and the Book (Half-Rome))

What does the body that lives through helpfulness

(The Ring and the Book (The Pope))

*

So I get what Peter Cochran is saying now. The line in question has eleven syllables ("hours" is considered monosyllabic). It must therefore have a feminine ending, which means that the final syllable is unstressed and the penultimate syllable is stressed. 

Thus Byron stressed the fourth syllable of "Sardanapalus". 

The name crops up a dozen times in the play's verse speeches. Positive support for this pronunciation comes from I.2.8, I.2.249, II.1.368, II.1.404, and III.1.28; and it isn't contradicted by the other occurrences (I.2.259. III.1.10, III.1.27, III.1.296, III.1.412, IV.1.413, IV.1.516).

By the way, the verse also shows where Byron placed the stress on some of the other names: Se-MIR-a-MIS, Be-LES-es, Ar-BAC-es, Eu-PHRAT-es. Mede and Medes are pronounced as monosyllables ("mead", "meads").

*

But I could have saved myself a lot of time if, instead of scrutinizing the minutiae of Byron's blank verse practice in Sardanapalus, I had gone straight to Don Juan:

Thou mak’st philosophers; there’s Epicurus
    And Aristippus, a material crew!
Who to immoral courses would allure us
    By theories quite practicable too;
If only from the devil they would insure us,
    How pleasant were the maxim (not quite new),
‘Eat, drink, and love, what can the rest avail us?’
So said the royal sage Sardanapalus.

(Don Juan, Canto II Stanza 207)

This Canto was written Dec 1818-Jan 1819. In that outrageous final line, maybe, lies the germ of the play Byron wrote two years later. 

Anyway, for our purposes the line confirms the accent on the fourth syllable, and it also confirms the vowel sound. As Cochran says, it is PAY-lus (not PAR-lus or PAL-lus). 

And it tells us about the name's other accent too. (Is it on the first syllable or the second? Peter Cochran, you may have noticed, didn't commit himself.) Wherever the name occurs in the play, you could make a case for either sar-DAN-a-PAY-lus or SAR-dan-a-PAY-lus, since Byron's blank verse allows trochaic inversion.  

But the line in Don Juan tells us, beyond reasonable doubt, that the accents fall on the second and fourth syllables, not the first and fourth.  

So now we know. Byron pronounced it sar-DAN-a-PAY-lus. The same stress-pattern as Patricia Highsmith, Aretha Franklin or Sir Edward Elgar.

*

Returning briefly to the "choppy" line I.2.8, there's two ways we can try to scan it, depending on how we negotiate the third foot. 

To sháre the sóft hours óf Sardánapálus,

To sháre the sóft hóurs of Sardánapálus,

The first way produces a regular rhythm, but ruthlessly ignores the natural accents of speech: the second tries an inversion of the third foot to restore the more natural accent on "hours" -- but the subsequent run of unstressed syllables is very awkward. 

There's no correct solution. As often when talking about Byron's verse, a sea metaphor is hard to resist. His lines have a general rhythmic drift, but the surface is enlivened by conflicting flashes; it sparkles. This line is one of the choppy ones, because the speech rhythm and the verse rhythm pull in different directions, like cross-currents; and that, I think, is just what Byron intended (inasmuch as he thought about it at all).  

*

Sardanapalus

And yet these forgotten works of the imagination are full of hidden treasures! There is not one of Byron's "impressionist studies" of striking episodes of history or historical legend, flung, as it were, with a "Take it or leave it" in the face of friend or foe, which does not transform names and shadows into persons and substance, which does not contain lines and passages of unquestionable beauty and distinction.

(Ernest Hartley Coleridge, 1901 (link below))

I've now read Sardanapalus three or four times in a row. (The first time I was on a flight that must nearly have passed over Nineveh, but I was oblivious of that.) 

I find it quite a compulsive reading experience, and a remarkably rich one. (No doubt it helps if you relish history plays as much as I do.) Despite the richness, I kept feeling I was missing something. 

But I don't agree with Bonamy Dobrée that Byron's plays are philosophical statements; not in respect of Sardanapalus, anyway. I think it's better to see it the way Byron described it, writing to John Murray on 14 July 1821:

My object has been to dramatize like the Greeks (a modest phrase!) striking passages of history, as they did of history & mythology. 

It's true that the figure of Sardanapalus often recalls Byron's own scandalous reputation; and also the recently-crowned George IV, who Byron (like most people) despised. When the topic is despotism, we might think of Bonaparte; and when it's the downfall of a long-continued dynasty, the Bourbons. Sometimes Byron seems to be remembering Shah Soltan Hosayn, whose downfall in 1722 marked the end of the Safavid dynasty in Persia. The play is open to all those thoughts. Yet it's basically retelling an old story in the free way of, say, Euripides' Andromache. 

Not all the richness relates directly to Sardanapalus; for example there are those hymns that book-end the play, Beleses to the sunset (Act II) and Myrrha to the sunrise (Act V). Byron's play has no Euripides-style Chorus, but these stupendous invocations have something like a choric function.

All the same, a great deal of the play's richness is down to the maddening, brilliant many-sidedness of its protagonist. So that's what my chosen excerpts are about. 

Myrrha. Look to the annals of thine Empire's founders.

Sardanapalus. They are so blotted o'er with blood, I cannot.
But what wouldst have? the Empire has been founded.
I cannot go on multiplying empires.

Myrrha. Preserve thine own.

Sardanapalus.‍             At least, I will enjoy it.
Come, Myrrha, let us go on to the Euphrates:
The hour invites, the galley is prepared,
And the pavilion, decked for our return,
In fit adornment for the evening banquet,
Shall blaze with beauty and with light, until
It seems unto the stars which are above us
Itself an opposite star; and we will sit
Crowned with fresh flowers like—

Myrrha.‍        Victims.

Sardanapalus.‍       No, like sovereigns,
The Shepherd Kings of patriarchal times,
Who knew no brighter gems than summer wreaths,
And none but tearless triumphs. Let us on.

Enter Pania.

Pania. May the King live for ever!

Sardanapalus.‍                Not an hour
Longer than he can love. How my soul hates
This language, which makes life itself a lie,
Flattering dust with eternity. Well, Pania!
Be brief.

Pania.‍    I am charged by Salemenes to
Reiterate his prayer unto the King,
That for this day, at least, he will not quit
The palace: when the General returns,
He will adduce such reasons as will warrant
His daring, and perhaps obtain the pardon
Of his presumption. 

Sardanapalus.‍      What! am I then cooped?
Already captive? can I not even breathe
The breath of heaven? Tell prince Salemenes,
Were all Assyria raging round the walls
In mutinous myriads, I would still go forth.

Pania. I must obey, and yet——

Myrrha.‍                           Oh, Monarch, listen.—
How many a day and moon thou hast reclined
Within these palace walls in silken dalliance,
And never shown thee to thy people's longing;
Leaving thy subjects' eyes ungratified,
The satraps uncontrolled, the Gods unworshipped,
And all things in the anarchy of sloth,
Till all, save evil, slumbered through the realm!
And wilt thou not now tarry for a day,—
A day which may redeem thee? Wilt thou not
Yield to the few still faithful a few hours,
For them, for thee, for thy past fathers' race,
And for thy sons' inheritance?

(Sardanapalus, I.2.547-589)

*

so blotted o'er with blood:  Sardanapalus is a great critic of the brutal military expansionism that has sustained the Assyrian empire. He himself hates the thought of bloodshed, but he isn't a revolutionary. He's born into despotism and is accustomed to doing whatever he likes without question. He's irked by subservience, but predictably upset when he badgers Myrrha into following her own will and it doesn't coincide with his own; what he wants is people happening to choose just what he would like them to. 

But what wouldst have? the Empire has been founded. I cannot go on multiplying empires. There is, as Byron realized, an element of comedy in Sardanapalus. He plays to the gallery, and probably raises a laugh here. But his argument is flimsy: not even the hawks want a new empire, just an expansion of this one; they want him to strike fear into the countries around, sack a few cities... And while he grandstands, as Myrrha unsmilingly responds, he's letting it all go down the pan.

Not an hour longer than he can love. Love is a very central theme in the play, but it's highly problematized; you can see the initially reluctant Byron taking up Teresa Guiccioli's suggestion and enthusiastically running with it, but rather turning it upside down in the process. Few modern readers, I think, will experience the ending as a simple triumph of love. Anyway, this speech swings sharply from a superbly idealistic romanticism and rejection of conventional flattery to Pania, be brief: the impatience of a despot whose playtime is being interrupted.

am I then cooped? Sardanapalus is swift to react to an incursion on his absolute freedom. Every producer needs to decide how to blend his parts: the majestic authority, wisdom and vision... but also the vanity and dandyism, the petulance of a spoiled child. 

in silken dalliance. What actually goes on at Sardanapalus' revels? Byron drapes them in discreet vagueness; not so his source Diodorus Siculus:

Sardanapalus, the thirtieth from Ninus, and the last king of the Assyrians, exceeded all his predecessors in sloth and luxury; for besides that he was seen of none out of his family, he led a most effeminate life: for, wallowing in pleasure and wanton dalliances, he clothed himself in women's attire, and spun fine wool and purple amongst the throngs of his whores and concubines. He painted likewise his face, and decked his whole body with other allurements like a strumpet, and was more lascivious than the most wanton courtesan. He imitated, likewise, a woman's voice, and not only daily inured himself to such meat and drink as might incite and stir up his lascivious lusts, but gratified them by filthy Catamites, as well as whores and strumpets, and without any sense of modesty, abusing both sexes, slighted shame, the concomitant of filthy and impure actions, and proceeded to such a degree of voluptuousness and sordid uncleanness, etc etc

(Diodorus Siculus in G. Booth's translation)

Byron's text doesn’t entirely suppress even the "filthy Catamites". They are the "beings less than women" mentioned by Salamenes in I.1 and they make a mute entrance as "young slaves" in I.2. Yet readers who wished to avert their eyes could easily believe that Sardanapalus and his revellers did little more than drink wine, wear flower-crowns and compose hymns to Myrrha's eyes. Our producer has some intriguing choices to make here; how strongly to bring out the hero’s bisexuality, in what way his love for Myrrha supersedes or coexists with his wider sexual browsing, and how to play this relationship between an "effeminate" king and a slave-girl with "masculine" characteristics; a remarkable relationship, but not always tranquil, and extremely unequal. 

[To be soberly scholarly, the attribution of a manly mind to a woman was a traditional compliment. Compare Dryden's "On the Monument of a Fair Maiden":

A female softness, with a manly mind; 
A daughter duteous, and a sister kind;
In sickness patient, and in death resigned.

]

[NB Byron was relaxed about re-using the expressions of eighteenth-century poets. Compare the description of Nero as "The silken son of dalliance" in Thomas Gray's Agrippina.]

*

Another extract. The treachery of Beleses and Arbaces has been discovered by Salemenes, but Sardanapalus refuses to hear the evidence against them. Beleses protests their innocence. 

Salemenes. Peace, factious priest, and faithless soldier! thou
Unit'st in thy own person the worst vices
Of the most dangerous orders of mankind.
Keep thy smooth words and juggling homilies
For those who know thee not. Thy fellow's sin
Is, at the least, a bold one, and not tempered
By the tricks taught thee in Chaldea.

Beleses.‍                                      Hear him,
My liege—the son of Belus! he blasphemes
The worship of the land, which bows the knee
Before your fathers.

Sardanapalus.‍            Oh! for that I pray you
Let him have absolution. I dispense with
The worship of dead men; feeling that I
Am mortal, and believing that the race
From whence I sprung are—what I see them—ashes.

Beleses. King! Do not deem so: they are with the stars,

And——

Sardanapalus.‍ You shall join them there ere they will rise,

If you preach farther—Why, this is rank treason.

Salemenes. My lord!

Sardanapalus.‍To school me in the worship of

Assyria's idols! Let him be released—

Give him his sword.

Salemenes.‍             My Lord, and King, and Brother,

I pray ye pause.

Sardanapalus.‍       Yes, and be sermonised,

And dinned, and deafened with dead men and Baal,

And all Chaldea's starry mysteries.

Beleses. Monarch! respect them.

Sardanapalus.‍                Oh! for that—I love them;

I love to watch them in the deep blue vault,

And to compare them with my Myrrha's eyes;

I love to see their rays redoubled in

The tremulous silver of Euphrates' wave,

As the light breeze of midnight crisps the broad

And rolling water, sighing through the sedges

Which fringe his banks: but whether they may be

Gods, as some say, or the abodes of Gods,

As others hold, or simply lamps of night,

Worlds—or the lights of Worlds—I know nor care not.

There's something sweet in my uncertainty

I would not change for your Chaldean lore;

Besides, I know of these all clay can know

Of aught above it, or below it—nothing.

I see their brilliancy and feel their beauty—

When they shine on my grave I shall know neither.

Beleses. For neither, sire, say better.

Sardanapalus.‍                               I will wait,

If it so please you, Pontiff, for that knowledge.

In the mean time receive your sword, and know

That I prefer your service militant

Unto your ministry—not loving either.

Salemenes. (aside). His lusts have made him mad. Then must I save him

Spite of himself.

Sardanapalus.‍ Please you to hear me, Satraps!

And chiefly thou, my priest, because I doubt thee

More than the soldier; and would doubt thee all

Wert thou not half a warrior: let us part

In peace—I'll not say pardon—which must be

Earned by the guilty; this I'll not pronounce ye,

Although upon this breath of mine depends

Your own; and, deadlier for ye, on my fears.

But fear not—for that I am soft, not fearful—

And so live on. Were I the thing some think me,

Your heads would now be dripping the last drops

Of their attainted gore from the high gates

Of this our palace, into the dry dust,
Their only portion of the coveted kingdom
They would be crowned to reign o'er—let that pass.
As I have said, I will not deem ye guilty,
Nor doom ye guiltless. Albeit better men
Than ye or I stand ready to arraign you;
And should I leave your fate to sterner judges,
And proofs of all kinds, I might sacrifice
Two men, who, whatsoe'er they now are, were
Once honest. Ye are free, sirs.

Arbaces.‍                             Sire, this clemency——

Beleses. (interrupting him). Is worthy of yourself; and, although innocent,
We thank——

Sardanapalus.‍ Priest! keep your thanksgivings for Belus;
His offspring needs none.

(Sardanapalus, II.1.229-299)

juggling homilies : Salemenes makes the familiar accusation of "priestcraft". Sardanapalus, who is avoiding taking sides, takes a more childish line: he merely objects to being dinned and sermonized. 

King! Do not deem so.. Beleses, trying to act the innocent, is respectfully bold.

Salemenes. My lord!  Salemenes registers his dismay at Sardanapalus saying "Why, this is rank treason", thus shifting the discussion from real treason to a trivial offence against decorum.

I know nor care not. Asserting our inevitable ignorance is an argument that has always appealed to hedonists. (Yet no assertion is more necessary today, when the media thrives on falsely promising to supply knowledge, and professional bodies on falsely claiming to possess it.) As regards the gods, Sardanapalus is honest enough to say that he takes pleasure from a state of ignorance; he doesn't draw the conclusion, though readers may be tempted to, that his open-ended enchantment is more truly religious and reverent than any priestly dogma.

But every argument can be misused, and we feel the awkward timing of this one, just when Sardanapalus is desperately seeking peace of mind not in inevitable ignorance but in wilful ignorance: he doesn't want to know anything about the conspiracy against him, because then he'd have to deal with it in ways he can't bear to think about.

His lusts have made him mad. The general idea of the king's debased lifestyle is kept afloat throughout the play, while details are avoided. 

I'll not say pardon... Later Zarina uses a similar expression in regard to Sardanapalus' own shortcomings.  

But fear not—for that I am soft, not fearful— And so live on. Sardanapalus compensates himself for inaction by leaving little doubt he considers Beleses and Arbaces guilty as hell. He's grandstanding again, but rather magnificently. He defines himself as "soft" -- soft-hearted, forgiving, averse to bloodshed -- but not fearful (fear, he says, would want to make an example of them). Some would say it amounts to offering himself up as a sacrifice. But Arbaces, at least, is deeply impressed.  

Two men, who, whatsoe'er they now are, were Once honest... Byron borrowed this idea from a later episode in Diodorus in which Arbaces, now king, pardons an erring Beleses.

and, although innocent, we thank....  Beleses sees that Arbaces is moved, and quickly cuts across him before he confesses to anything. 

*

In Aristotle, Cicero, Dio Cassius and western literature generally, Sardanapalus was a monster: the proverbial exemplar of "oriental" excess, idleness and debauchery, the man who threw away a thousand-year-old empire while sunk in a bestial slough of sensuality. 

Byron's Sardanapalus, A Tragedy was seeking the human being behind the monstrous reputation. Whether there was any precedent for doing that (e.g. in Boxberg's 1698 opera?) I'm not sure. [Incidentally Liszt began an opera Sardanapalo based on Byron's play, but he abandoned it.]

The story of Sardanapalus survived in Diodorus' compendium, presumably taken almost verbatim from the lost Persica of Ctesias of Cnidus (fl. 5th century BCE), but Ctesias' material was more myth than history. In the story it's the river Euphrates that has a fateful role in the king's downfall, but Nineveh is actually on the Tigris (opposite Mosul). The Assyrian empire did fall, but not with Ashurbanipal (if that's where the name "Sardanapalus" comes from). Ashurbanipal was notoriously brutal in warfare; Byron (though not Diodorus) makes Sardanapalus the exact opposite. 

Byron had read Diodorus (at age 12, he says); this must have been in the 1700 translation by G. Booth, who names the king's brother-in-law "Salemenus" (it should really be "Galaemenes"). But in Diodorus he's little more than a name: Salemenes in the play is essentially Byron's own invention, as is Myrrha and all the minor characters. Byron brings the whole lengthy revolt within the compass of a single night, and most of the detailed action is his own, though in Byron's case invention often means channelling something else. For instance Salemenes, especially in the scene where he confronts Sardanapalus (I.2) owes a lot to Dryden's Ventidius in All For Love. 

*

Notes

I.2.236:

Sar. Or for my trophies I have founded cities: 

"Or" doesn't make any sense here. Surely it should say: "Oh! for my trophies I have founded cities". I.e., If you want to talk about trophies, I've got 'em too (as my fierce predecessors did). 

II.1.104:

Arb. What, if we sound him?
Bel.‍                         Yes—if the time served.

The comma after "What" must be a mistake. Beleses' response shows that Arbaces is saying How about we ask him. 

II.1.244:

And --

Sar.   You shall join them there ere they will rise,

This is the reading of the 1823 edition. Both Coleridge and Cochran accidentally omit "there".

*

Sardanapalus: the complete text on Project Gutenberg, in Vol V of Byron's works edited by E.H. Coleridge (1901).

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23475/23475-h/23475-h.htm#SARDANAPALUS_TITLE .

Peter Cochran's edition of Byron's Sardanapalus: A Tragedy [PDF]:

http://www.newsteadabbeybyronsociety.org/works/downloads/sardanapalus.pdf .

[Peter Cochran (1944 - 2015). His invaluable editions were web-published and have no publication dates. I guess his work on Sardanapalus mostly dates from c. 2000.]

Diodorus Siculus, Library of History (Loeb, 1933), ed. and trans. C.H. Oldfather. The section about Sardanapalus is II.23-28. This link should open in the right place. 

https://archive.org/details/DiodorosOfSicily034.598/Diodoros%20of%20Sicily%2001%20%281.1-2.34%29/page/n225/mode/2up .

The translation that the twelve-year-old Byron had read was The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian in Fifteen Books by G. Booth, Esq. (first published in 1700). In Booth's arrangement the story of Sardanapallus (as he spells it) is in Book II, Chapter II. This link should open in the right place.  

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_agd-eLVNRMMC/page/119/mode/2up .

Wide-ranging article by Jorge Álvarez in La Brújula Verde about the legend of Sardanapalus and its scanty historical basis. More informative than Wikipedia e.g. about references to Sardanapalus in classical authors. 

https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2024/10/sardanapalus-the-depraved-assyrian-king-who-inspired-writers-musicians-and-paintersdid-he-really-exist/ .

Byron's Sardanapalus has interested plenty of academics in recent years. The essays I found most helpful were by Daniel P. Watkins (1981, 1985), Susan J. Wolfson (1991), Daniela Garofalo (2002) and Dana Van Kooy (2019); you'll find them all on JStor. 

*

On Byron's The Corsair (1814):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2014/12/byron-corsair-1814.html

On Byron's Manfred (1817):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/07/manfred.html

On Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/08/childe-harold.html

On Byron's Sardanapalus (1821):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2025/06/byrons-sardanapalus-1821.html

. 

Some poetry by Mary Rolls

I've been reading about Westmorland, the historic county. I had never been sure where its borders lay, because these days the whole region is just called Cumbria. Essentially it's Kirby Stephen, Appleby, Kendal, Windermere, Ambleside, and Grasmere: it included some of the western Pennines, all of the Howgills, and the SE part of the Lakeland fells. Helvellyn is on the border with Cumberland. 

Westmorland was one of England's least populous counties, but I came across the name of a poet, Mary Rolls née Hillary (1775-1835), who was born in Westmorland to a Quaker family. In 1815 she married a curate and moved south, eventually to Aldwincle Rectory, Northants. She published as Mrs Henry Rolls. I can't see that any of her poems have been published online as text, so here's a sample of what I could find. 

ADDRESS TO LORD BYRON  (Published as a pamphlet in 1816)

Is this the boon of partial Heaven!

Is misery still to Genius given!

Does vengeance still prepare the blow!

Must poverty still lay it low!

Must scorn and grief its steps pursue,

And cold contempt her taunts renew!

Or, when slow sinking to the grave,

Is no kind arm outstretch'd to save!

When those who rise, by noble birth,

Above the wants of vulgar earth—

Receive within the cultur'd breast,

The Muses' sacred seal imprest,—

And pour from the enraptur'd lyre

The song of pure poetic fire;—

Must they too feel each varying pain,—

The maddening pulse— the fever'd brain,—

Each varying form of heart-felt woe,—

The lingering pang—the sudden throe—

And all the stings, that breast must prove,

That mourns the lot of blighted love;—

Till apathy each thought o'ercomes,

And every finer sense benumbs!

Or,—if the harp's deep notes still flow—

Speak but of scenes of guilt or woe—

Of victims none have power to save,

Or the dark slumbers of the grave!

BYRON ! is this thy genuine tale?

No!-- let thy friend remove the veil;—

Shew to thy heart its real state,—

And kindly warn thee ere too late;—

Rend the deep cloud that shrouds thy mind—

The richest—brightest—of its kind!

Why dost thou, the cold Sceptic's slave,

Renounce the Almighty's aid, who gave

That choicest gift—a soul refin'd—

Thy almost more than human mind?

To some, one feeble spark is sent;

To thee the Poet's sun is lent!

Others may catch a transient ray;

On thee, its beams unclouded play!

But, were those glories given to shine—

For thee alone, a wreath to twine?

To bid thee point a gloomy road,—

And steal the listener's heart from God?—

To prove us pilgrims of an hour—

Deny his everlasting power?—

And shew—'midst darkness, doubt, and gloom—

The lasting slumbers of the tomb?

To rend the bands of home-felt joy,

And life's sweet charities destroy?—

To raise the crowd's base censures wild,

And from the Sire divide the Child?

I am thy friend! ---none more admires

Thy genuine, true, poetic fires!

None hears, with purer joys, thy lays;

None, with more pleasure, speaks thy praise;

And none more truly can lament

Those rich, best gifts, so basely spent;—

And on thy tale of private woe,

None can a tenderer thought bestow!

Then be it mine the path to shew,

Where the rich fruits of grief may grow!

Bow thy proud heart beneath His rod,

And own the chastening hand of God!

Then happier, nobler, purer rise,

Fresh from thy grateful sacrifice!

Then fill thy lofty proper sphere,

And, whilst applauding senates hear,

Assert thy Country's sacred cause, 

Maintain her rights, protect her laws!

Stand the supporter of the Throne,

And make thy Sovereign's cause thy own!

Oh! let that choicest gift of heaven,—

To favor'd mortals only given—

Thy rich enchanting stream of song—

Be pour'd pure Virtue's course along!

Proclaim the triumphs of the brave,

Who fought their Country's rights to save;—

And their more mournful glories tell,

In Victory's field who nobly fell!

Or bid those beauteous scenes arise,

That ne'er must bless these wishful eyes!

Tell the proud tale of Greece once more;

Her long-lost lyre, to life restore!

And let thy purer notes proclaim

How sunk 'mid shades of Vice her name!

Ah! let the pure, the moral tale,

O'er every feeling heart prevail;

And, as the tears of Beauty flow,

Spread through her bosom Virtue's glow!

But there is still a higher theme,

Bright as the Poet's brightest dream!—

To sing the praise of Him, whose love

Descended from the realms above,—

From Sin's dark chains, the mind to save,---

And captive lead the vanquish'd grave!

Oh! worthy of thy lyre such strain! 

To sing Jehovah's endless reign;

To point in raptured strains the road,

And lead the wandering heart to God!

Then shalt thou own a saving power,

Descending in this mournful hour;—

Then shall thy swelling sorrows cease;—

Thy life be joy—thy close be peace!

As sinks the slow declining sun,

When the long summer's day is done,

Yet leaves a track along the skies,

To shew he soon again shall rise;—

So calm may be thy setting day,

When life's last years are roll'd away!

Calm in the grave may'st thou repose

Till Heaven's eternal gates unclose!

Then may'st thou, with enraptur'd ears,

Drink the rich music of the spheres;

And join, with seraph hosts, the song,

Through endless ages pour'd along!

Then shalt thou own the Poet's prize—

The richest present of the skies—

In mercy to mankind was given,

To smooth the path from Earth to Heaven.

(Poem source.)

It's tempting to laugh, e.g. at the thought of Byron championing his Sovereign's cause (Byron despised the Prince Regent). Still, I do like Mary Rolls' forthrightness. The style of the poem is very much in Byron's own mode (e.g. the splendid punctuation and the speed) and she was evidently a genuine fan, though a deploring one, who fell for the first two Cantos of Childe Harold despite plainly seeing their tendency. I suppose when she calls herself Byron's friend she doesn't mean she was actually acquainted with him; this is "friend" in the sense of supporter or well-wisher. Nevertheless she seems to know something about Byron's forthcoming lines on Waterloo (in Childe Harold III, published November 1816).

THE BUGLE-HORN

by Mrs Henry Rolls

The bugle-horn! How sweet the strain

   That floats along the moon-lit dale!

Oh ! It awakes a thrilling train

  Of thoughts long wrapp'd in time's dim veil:

The scenes, the hopes of  life's young morn,

When first I heard the bugle-horn!

Amidst my native mountains wild,

  When those clear notes responsive rung,

Oft have they roused the lonely child

  From dreams where fairy voices sung;

Starting, I deemed the bugle-horn

Was by some elfin huntsman borne!

Oh! then 'twas sweet at break of day

  To catch from echoing rock and scar,

Those notes which called the hunters gay

  To meet and join the sylvan war;

As those I loved at early morn

Assembled to the bugle-horn!

And it proclaimed the jocund feast,

  When seemed alive the mountain side,

As chief and peasant came; the guest

  To him, of all our race the pride,

With eye, bright as the star of morn,

And voice, clear as the bugle-horn!

But it has poured a solemn strain,

  Borne but by fancy to mine ear;

It floated o'er the sable train

  That wept around his early bier;

E'en now o'er ocean's wave seems borne

The echo of that bugle-horn!

(The Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, &c, 1 November 1828)

Departed greatness claims a sigh,--

We mourn when mighty heroes die,

And tears of anguish dim the eye,

  That sees its love to earth resigned!

But, how deplore the Prince of Song,

So raised above the tuneful throng, 

But who debased, so deep, so long,

  The matchless wonders of his mind!

If strains that angels weep to know,

Are poured upon a world below,

Can bid indignant virtue glow,

  BYRON! such guilty strains were thine:

Yet thine the song could fire impart

To Slavery's chilled and drooping heart,

And bid, fair Greece, thy Patriot start,

  By all the music of the Nine!

(from "A Monody on the Death of Lord Byron", found in Choice Selections and Original Effusions; Or Pen and Ink Well Employed (1828))

I was hoping to track down her longer poems, but haven't succeeded; e.g her first book Sacred Sketches from Scripture History (1815), and Moscow, a Poem (1816).

MOSCOW, a Poem; by MRS HENRY ROLLS. London, Law and Whitaker, 1816. 

The author has founded her poem on one of the most dreadful events recorded, the destruction of Moscow, and drawn a moral inference that there is an ever-watching Providence, who may suffer tyranny and oppression to prevail for a time, but will, in an unexpected moment, turn the retributive scales of justice, and hurl the bolts of vengeance on the devoted heads of his guilty victims.

The facts are taken from Labaume; and their authenticity cannot be doubted. The versification is generally good, the descriptions are often lofty, and the interest is pleasingly excited throughout. This is not inferior to her former poem, Sketches from Sacred History, which met with so favourable a reception; and we have no doubt the subject of the poem, and the author's reputation, will induce our readers to become purchasers. 

(Notice in The Ladies' Monthly Museum).

From Legends of the North; or, The Feudal Christmas: a Poem (1825):

Veil'd in a cloud of sober gray,

Arose the year's last parting day;

And as at times a shower pass'd by,

Or swept the gale with plaintive sigh,

Seem'd as though nature join'd to mourn

The hours that never can return!

As though the morrow's rising sun

Had not another year begun,

And spread its ample page sublime

Beneath the rapid pen of Time;

Like Age, which marks its fading powers,

Weeps o'er its few short languid hours,

And, though all conscious of decay,

Would yet their final close delay, --

Unmindful that the reign of death

Ends with its last departing breath,

And that the last expiring sigh

Will waft to immortality.

(Quoted in a review in The Monthly Review, for September 1825.)

Five stanzas of Childe Harold

 

CLXXI.

   Woe unto us, not her ; for she sleeps well :
   The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
   Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
   Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung
   Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung
   Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate
   Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung
   Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,—

CLXXII.

   These might have been her destiny ; but no,
   Our hearts deny it :  and so young, so fair,
   Good without effort, great without a foe ;
   But now a bride and mother—and now there !

   How many ties did that stern moment tear !
   From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast
   Is linked the electric chain of that despair,
   Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppressed
The land which loved thee so, that none could love thee best.

CLXXIII.

   Lo, Nemi ! navelled in the woody hills
   So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
   The oak from his foundation, and which spills
   The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
   Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
   The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
   And, calm as cherished hate, its surface wears
   A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

CLXXIV.

   And near Albano's scarce divided waves
   Shine from a sister valley ;—and afar

   The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
   The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
   'Arms and the Man,' whose reascending star
   Rose o'er an empire ;—but beneath thy right
   Tully reposed from Rome ;—and where yon bar
   Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight,
The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's delight.

CLXXV.

   But I forget.—My pilgrim's shrine is won,
   And he and I must part,—so let it be,—
   His task and mine alike are nearly done ;
   Yet once more let us look upon the sea :
   The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
   And from the Alban mount we now behold
   Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
   Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold
Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled

CLXXVI.

   Upon the blue Symplegades : long years—  ...

(Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto IV (written 1817, published 1818), Stanzas 171-176)

171.1 her . Princess Charlotte, in line to the throne, whose death in childbirth, aged 21, on 6 November 1817, led to a national outpouring of grief. Byron and Hobhouse heard about it on 23 November, while riding on the Lido in Venice; and, anti-monarchists as they were, were as shocked as other British subjects. Their general view of sovereigns was similar to what many of us think today about big businesses: that they're all, essentially, criminal enterprises. But (also like many of us today) they had no particular idea of what to do about it. And they were easily inconsistent; much of Canto IV seems to honour old despotisms while pouring scorn on new ones. These contradictory feelings are apparent in the lines about Princess Charlotte. (They must have been a late addition to a poem whose first draft had been completed at the end of July.) 

171.5-6. till the o'erstrung Nations have armed in madness . Byron was writing this off the back of twenty-five years of war in western Europe. But it still feels quite apposite. 

171.8 blind omnipotence . Not literally omnipotence, but the staggering amount of power invested in a single person that ought, you might imagine, be insurance against disaster. And yet it isn't. One reason being that consciousness of great power seems to induce a more than usual absence of common sense, which is where the blindness comes in. 

172.3 great without a foe . Byron acknowledging that "greatness" tends to be attributed in circumstances of adversity and conflict. His poetry is looking around for a better way of conceiving greatness. 

172.4 But now a bride and mother—and now there ! . Charlotte had been married for a year and a half. She became a mother (to a stillborn son) just hours before she died. "There" is the "abyss" of stanza 167.

172.6 thy Sire . The Prince Regent, who would become George IV in 1820. Byron refers to Britons as "his" subjects because he was the acting monarch (George III having been permanently mad since 1810). 

172.7 electric chain . The phrase sounds a bit odd today, but metal chains were often used in early electricity experiments. See e.g. accounts of Galvani's contracting frog's legs, which Mary Shelley knew all about. But maybe Byron was thinking more of a human chain, like those in the Abbé Nollet's sensational demonstrations at Versailles (1746), where a hundred people holding hands received a near-simultaneous shock that made them leap into the air.

 

173.1 Nemi . The Lago di Nemi is a lake set in an ancient crater surrounded by woods. For near on a hundred stanzas we've been in Rome, but now the poem has leapt without warning into the countryside: the area known as the Alban Hills, about 20 miles to the SE. It was a well-established part of the Grand Tour: Addison wrote about it, e.g.:

In our Excursion to Albano we went as far as Nemi, that takes its Name from the Nemus Dianae. The whole Country thereabouts is still over-run with Woods and Thickets. The Lake of Nemi lyes in a very deep Bottom, so surrounded on all Sides with Mountains and Groves, that the Surface of it is never ruffled with the least Breath of Wind, which perhaps, together with the Clearness of its Waters, gave it formerly the Name of Diana's Looking-Glass.

—Speculumque Dianae.

Virg.

(Joseph Addison, Remarks on several parts of Italy, &c. in the years 1701, 1702, 1703.)

173.7 calm as cherished hate . One of Byron's unexpected analogies, and a reminder that his poetry is usually thinking about several different things at once. The hate that Byron attracted in England, and cordially returned, though he tried not to, was a topic that came up earlier in this canto (e.g. stanzas 133-137). As for the beautiful lake, secure from the ocean buffeting that Byron so revelled in, it briefly takes on a sinister aspect: a cold heart, an enemy you can't touch. 

174.1 Albano . Another crater lake, very near to Nemi ("scarce divided"). This is not apparent when beside the lakes, only from above: a first hint of where Byron is standing. It's worth jumping on Google Maps at this point! 

174.3 Tiber . On the north-western horizon the course of the Tiber runs through Rome to the sea at Ostia.

174.4 The Latian coast . On the western horizon: a part of the Tyrrhenian coast that was the setting for much of the Aeneid, its first line quoted here. (Aeneas is the "Man" whose star, after the fall of Troy, eventually reascended when he established a new homeland, later to become an empire.)

174.6-7. but beneath thy right Tully reposed from Rome . There are various places which claim to be the site of a Ciceronian villa; Byron is talking about Grottaferrata. (There is no trace of a villa there, but the abbey might overlie it.) The word "but" marks the jump from Rome's distant origins to the time of Cicero ("Tully") and a Roman civilization so bustling you might want to get away from it sometimes. If Byron (and the reader) are looking directly at the Latian coast, then Grottaferrata is precisely "beneath thy right", about three miles away. 

174.9 The Sabine farm . The "weary bard" is Horace. Byron's farewell to Horace "whom I hated so" in stanza 77 proved premature; in fact the new satiric manner of Beppo and Don Juan brought Horace back into Byron's thoughts. His Sabine farm (or villa) was at Licenza, in the hills NE of Rome...  some 30 miles, as the crow flies, from the viewer's current location. (But Byron did go to Licenza (letter to John Murray, 4 June 1817).)

175.1  But I forget.—My pilgrim's shrine is won . Refers back to stanza 164, where the pilgrim's wanderings are said to be done. (This led to thoughts of fame, oblivion and death, hence the "abyss" which supplied a cue for Byron’s lines about Princess Charlotte.) The pilgrim, of course, is Childe Harold, the now-spectral figure who in Canto IV is only mentioned when being finally ushered from the scene. 

The idea of a poem ending with pilgrims reaching a shrine vaguely recalls The Canterbury Tales (at least in its putatively adjusted scheme). But where or what is this shrine that Childe Harold has "won" (i.e. arrived at)? I suppose Byron could mean St Peter's in Rome (stanzas 153-159). At a deeper level, Childe Harold's pilgrimage is over when the poet himself attains psychic congruence and no longer needs his doppelganger. 

175.4 Yet once more let us look upon the sea . Initiating the final movement of the poem, a celebration of the sea and of Byron swimming in its waves: "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!" (179). 

175.6 the Alban mount . After three stanzas of views Byron finally tells us where we're standing: on the summit of Monte Albano, more commonly called Monte Cavo, "the dominant peak of the Alban Hills" (Wikipedia). In the poem this exultant glimpse of a wider world springs forth without warning after a lengthy scrutiny of Rome and its antiquities. In reality, during his visit to Rome in April-May 1817 Byron took frequent rides out of the city, including to here (letter to John Murray, 9 May 1817 [PDF]).

The westward view from Monte Albano (Cavo). The crater lakes of Nemi (left) and Albano (right). In the distance, the "Latian coast" and the Mediterranean sea.

[Image source: https://meeters.org/event/monte-cavo-escursione-occhialone-via-sacra?date=&category=experience .]

175.8 Calpe's rock . Not the Peñon d'Ifach at Calpe on the Costa Blanca, but an old name for the Rock of Gibraltar, past which Childe Harold is shown entering the Mediterranean in Canto II stanza 22. (But Byron himself only ever passed it in a westerly direction.)

175.9 dark Euxine . The Black Sea. The Greek name means "hospitable"; apparently an irony. 

176.1 Upon the blue Symplegades . The Symplegades were the clashing rocks negotiated by Jason; basically legendary, though subsequently identified with real rocky islets in the strait. They acquired the epithet "blue" in Latin literature (Cyaneae Insulae). Byron implies that they're now submerged. 

 

*

Specimen of an annotated Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, based on just five of its 500 stanzas. (I've no intention of doing any more!)

A couple of months ago I was in Hastings Old Town and treated myself to a book, this slim pocket volume of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a poem I'd never read. 

Cassell's National Library was 209 volumes published weekly from 1886 to 1889. They were some of the earliest paperbacks, but were also published clothbound, like this one.

There are amusing adverts in the end-papers, but when we get to the poem the format is attractively uncluttered, about three stanzas on each page, and there are no notes. Even the first editions had Byron's own notes. 

Anyway, I found the attractive absence of notes stimulated me to do my own scraping about to understand Byron's many allusions. 

The extract I chose for my sample comes from near the end of the elongated final Canto (IV), at a point where the reader who has dutifully gone through the whole poem may well be struggling to concentrate (which was definitely my own experience). It felt good to put these easily overlooked lines in the spotlight, even if I was the only person in the audience. 

*

No need to introduce Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Peter Cochran's lively editions are available as PDFs -- my grateful debts will be apparent.

Cantos I and II (1812):

https://petercochran.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/chp123.pdf

Canto III (1816):

https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/childe_harold_31.pdf

Canto IV (1818):

https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/chp4.pdf

*

roll on thou grate and restless ocean roll over the LOT", says molesworth in Whizz for Atomms (Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, 1956). Our schoolboy hero perceives that Childe Harold's jejune nihilism continues to underlie Byron's celebration of the sea, and he eagerly adopts it for young Elizabethans of the atomic age. (But he dispenses with the Mediterranean dark blue; this "ocean" sounds more like the sea on a grey day in Margate.) 

*

On Byron's The Corsair (1814):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2014/12/byron-corsair-1814.html

On Byron's Manfred (1817):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/07/manfred.html

On Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/08/childe-harold.html

On Byron's Sardanapalus (1821):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2025/06/byrons-sardanapalus-1821.html

Byron's Manfred (1817)

Manfred et l'esprit, 1831 painting by Charles Durupt.

[Image source: Wikipedia . Charles Durupt (1804 - 1831) was a French painter born in Paris. Manfred in his gallery at midnight summons the elemental spirits (Act I Scene 1). In the poem the spirits have no corporeal form until, at Manfred's insistence, the Seventh Spirit assumes one; it takes the form of a beautiful woman; an apparition that overwhelms Manfred and then vanishes leaving him crushed. Given that Durupt's painting shows Manfred as engaged but not particularly overwhelmed, and that the figure is carrying a kind of wand, I'm inclined to think that it actually depicts the First Spirit (the relatively amiable spirit of the air). ]

ACT 1.

Scene 1.—Manfred alone.—Scene, a Gothic Gallery.—Time, Midnight.

Man. The lamp must be replenished, but even then

It will not burn so long as I must watch:

My slumbers—if I slumber—are not sleep,

But a continuance, of enduring thought,

Which then I can resist not: in my heart

There is a vigil, and these eyes but close

To look within; and yet I live, and bear

The aspect and the form of breathing men.

But Grief should be the Instructor of the wise;

Sorrow is Knowledge: they who know the most

Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,

The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.

Philosophy and science, and the springs

Of Wonder, and the wisdom of the World,

I have essayed, and in my mind there is

A power to make these subject to itself—

But they avail not: I have done men good,

And I have met with good even among men—

But this availed not: I have had my foes,

And none have baffled, many fallen before me—

But this availed not:—Good—or evil—life—

Powers, passions—all I see in other beings,

Have been to me as rain unto the sands,

Since that all-nameless hour. I have no dread,

And feel the curse to have no natural fear,

Nor fluttering throb, that beats with hopes or wishes,

Or lurking love of something on the earth.

Now to my task.—

(Opening lines of Manfred)

So our discovery begins with Manfred's tenderness: for the little life of the lamp, which is echoed a few lines later in the "fluttering throb" of ordinary human expectation.

Yet this tenderness for ordinary things and people, though recurrent, comes with a strong sense of alienation. Manfred’s own existence has become an un-slumbering "continuance", a "vigil" notable for its indifference to hopes and fears. 

And though this is a living death, there's a great deal of pride in "Powers, passions -- all I see in other beings, /

Have been to me as rain unto the sands....".

It would be too existentially crushing, now, to question the assumption of his own differentness.

Indeed Manfred seizes on the very horror of the "all-nameless hour", the very extremity of his crime, to bolster that belief in being so darn different from everyone else. 

*

Manfred begins with Byron channelling Goethe's Faust, but only superficially, the stories have nothing else to unite them. He uses other writers a lot (check Peter Cochran's edition for the numerous Shakespeare half-quotations) but his own preoccupations and swimmy style are so distinct that we never for a moment think of Manfred as less than 100% Byron. 

The Hellespont, Portovenere to Lerici, across the Tagus, the length of the Grand Canal.... Byron was truly the Barbara Hernandez of his day.

As Mirka Horová and Chris Murray have argued, Byron's love of open-water swimming is totally relevant to his poetic. (Swinburne , a strong swimmer himself, was well aware of it.)

Byron adored swimming -- it was the one activity -- well, maybe along with riding and sex -- where his lameness was no hindrance at all. There's a swimmy aspect to his poetry too, a registering of currents and swells rather than straightforward direction. The editions I've seen contain copious notes, yet it's remarkable how often both the verse and the action contain ambiguous elements on which the editors do not pronounce, and probably can't. We have to make our own sense of it. 

Manfred enthrals as an ongoing action, i.e. because of what it is in each moment, but not particularly because of where it's headed (the hero's death, as we suppose from the very outset). It's very re-readable: but does the hero really develop during the course of the drama, or is he essentially a static image being slowly rotated and revealed to us as he's seen from different aspects?

*

George Gordon, Lord Byron. Manfred: A Dramatic Poem. Written 1816-1817, except for some or all of the "Incantation" in Act I Scene 1 (1813-1814?) . Published 1817.

Complete text of Manfred, edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge (1901): 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20158/20158-h/20158-h.htm#FNanchor_118 . 

There's also this useful modern edition by Peter Cochran [PDF]:

https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/manfred_modernised.pdf .

The text of Manfred is on Wikisource too, but I noticed one or two glaring OCR errors.

Manfred on the Jungfrau, 1842 painting by Ford Madox Brown.

[Image source: Wikipedia . Ford Madox Brown (1821 - 1893) was a British artist, born in Calais. The painting shows the suicidal Manfred teetering on a precipice, with the Chamois Hunter approaching to rescue him (Act I Scene 2).]

[Manfred.]      ...     Farewell, ye opening Heavens!
Look not upon me thus reproachfully—
You were not meant for me—Earth! take these atoms!

[As Manfred is in act to spring from the cliff, the Chamois Hunter seizes and retains him with a sudden grasp.]

Chamois Hunter. Hold, madman!—though aweary of thy life,
Stain not our pure vales with thy guilty blood:
Away with me——I will not quit my hold.

(From Manfred,  Act I Scene 2.)

Manfred is still seeking oblivion, now through suicide (as was suggested to him during the scene with the spirits). 

But there's a great struggle within him. Recurrent tenderness. In the end he meekly allows the Chamois Hunter to lead him away.

Manfred on the Jungfrau, 1837 watercolour by John Martin.

[Image source: Wikipedia . John Martin (1793 - 1854) was a popular English painter, born in Haydon Bridge, Northumberland. The same scene as Brown's, but now dwarfed by the alpine setting.]

"Prend garde, mon ami ! La prochaine étape est la mort !" 1853 illustration for Manfred by Gustave Doré.

[Image source: Wikipedia  . Gustave Doré (1832 - 1883) was a French painter and illustrator, born in Strasbourg. The title translates the Chamois Hunter's warning: "Friend! have a care, / Your next step may be fatal!" (Act I Scene 2).]

Scene from Manfred, 1833 painting by Thomas Cole.

[Image source: Wikipedia . In Yale University Art Gallery.  Thomas Cole (1801 - 1848) was born in Bolton (Lancashire), emigrated to America in 1818 and is often called the founder of the Hudson River School. The scene shows the Witch of the Alps appearing beneath the sunbow (Act II Scene 2). The figure of Manfred himself is not shown; we are seeing what he sees.]

Witch.                      Son of Earth!
I know thee, and the Powers which give thee power!
I know thee for a man of many thoughts,
And deeds of good and ill, extreme in both,
Fatal and fated in thy sufferings.
I have expected this—what would'st thou with me?

Manfred. To look upon thy beauty—nothing further.
The face of the earth hath maddened me, and I
Take refuge in her mysteries, and pierce
To the abodes of those who govern her—
But they can nothing aid me. I have sought
From them what they could not bestow, and now
I search no further.

Witch.                   What could be the quest
Which is not in the power of the most powerful,
The rulers of the invisible?

Manfred. A boon;—
But why should I repeat it? 'twere in vain.

Witch. I know not that; let thy lips utter it.

Manfred. Well, though it torture me, 'tis but the same;
My pang shall find a voice. From my youth upwards
My Spirit walked not with the souls of men,
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys—my griefs—my passions—and my powers,
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh,
Nor midst the Creatures of Clay that girded me
Was there but One who—but of her anon. ...

(From Manfred, Act II Scene 2)

Manfred, calling up the Witch of the Alps, allows himself to become confessional. 

"I had no sympathy with breathing flesh / Nor midst the Creatures of Clay that girded me": the first line refers to (chiefly) men in the business of life; the second line refers to (chiefly) women as sexual partners. Manfred expresses Byron's frequent feeling of being smothered by the sheer availability of sex. 

Like the previous spirit scene, it ends bad-temperedly. 

Manfred has described his sense of alienation from human society; and we've seen how that works out with the Chamois Hunter. Manfred feels and expresses tender things, but this aspect of his character coexists with a prickly standoffishness, a psychotic degree of self-sufficiency. 

But he doesn't feel any more at home in the spirit world. In the play's mythology, the spirits aren't characterized by much interest in human life or death and they see Manfred as very much a "creature of clay" himself: a thing, obeyed but scorned, as the Seventh Spirit puts it. Manfred returns the scorn with interest, and himself asserts the dignity of being "cooped in clay", Man's Promethean fire, etc (Byron channelling Hamlet and Aeschylus). 

Manfred and the Alpine Witch, 1837 watercolour by John Martin.

[Image source: Wikipedia . Unlike Thomas Cole,  John Martin does depict the figure of Manfred -- and accompanied by a weird sort of Brocken spectre-like image of himself.]

Manfred et Astarté, 1892 lithograph by Henri Fantin-Latour

[Image source: Wikipedia  . Henri Fantin-Latour (1836 - 1904) was a French painter and lithographer, born in Grenoble.  Manfred with the Phantom of Astarte, his dead lover -- and sister, presumably (Act II Scene 4). Fantin-Latour was inspired by Schumann's music as well as Byron’s poem. This lithograph, in the Cleveland Museum of Art, is my favourite of Fantin-Latour's many treatments of the subject.]

[Manfred.] ...Speak to me! I have wandered o'er the earth,
And never found thy likeness—Speak to me!
Look on the fiends around—they feel for me:
I fear them not, and feel for thee alone.
Speak to me! though it be in wrath;—but say—
I reck not what—but let me hear thee once—
This once—once more!

Phantom of Astarte. Manfred!

Manfred.                   Say on, say on—
I live but in the sound—it is thy voice!

Phantom. Manfred! To-morrow ends thine earthly ills.
Farewell!

Manfred.     Yet one word more—am I forgiven?

Phantom. Farewell!

Manfred.         Say, shall we meet again?

Phantom.                           Farewell!

Manfred. One word for mercy! Say thou lovest me.

Phantom. Manfred!

[The Spirit of Astarte disappears.]

(From Manfred, Act II Scene 4.)

The meeting with Astarte, or the Phantom or Spirit of Astarte, is the play's tipping point. Things really change here. For instance, the play's opening image of constantly churning mental activity is replaced, in Act III, by the strange calm that Manfred himself wonders at. The sun, for whom Manfred could feel nothing in I.2, is now the subject of his magnificent farewell. Acceptance has come. 

In the play's mythology, Manfred calls up the elemental spirits, or even appears among the spirits of destiny, with relative ease. On the other hand calling up the dead is portrayed as extremely exceptional and extremely difficult. And one reason I admire this Fantin-Latour picture is that it captures just how very dead Astarte is. If this is brother and sister, what strikes us is their unlikeness, the fact of their belonging to utterly different modes of existence. And for Astarte to say anything at all is clearly extremely difficult, too. 

How should we characterize what happens here? We can note that in calling up Astarte Manfred is seeking the opposite of what he at first sought, namely oblivion. You can see why Manfred longed for oblivion, but in the end it isn't worthy of his determination to live and die on his own terms. Subsequently Manfred has acknowledged his human nature, and his individual history. In the end he needs to face Astarte, not to re-bury her in oblivion.

And yes, he's seeking to assuage his enormous sense of guilt by obtaining forgiveness from his victim (adored victim, of course). 

But he doesn't obtain it, nor any other assurances, only the promise of his own death. 

Maybe it's the lack of pardon that quietens him. Pardon was his own construction of what he sought. But in a real meeting with a real person, we get both more and less than the agenda we construct beforehand. 

In this agonizingly minimal interview, Manfred at last encounters someone he loves: his only love. And maybe Manfred's most genuine but least acknowledged feeling throughout the play is not guilt but loneliness. Even his plea for forgiveness is really just about trying to make Astarte say more, to prolong the sound of her voice. 

And where does it leave him afterwards? Unpardoned he may be, but still there's the fact that she knew him, the fact of their joint history, the vastness of shared meaning in her way of saying "Farewell", or "Manfred". In reality it's the most we can expect from the dead. Forgiveness, if such a thing truly exists, must be sought elsewhere. 

Manfreds Sterbestunde (Manfred's Dying Hour), 1825 painting by Johann Peter Krafft.

[Image source: Wikipedia  . Johann Peter Krafft (1780 - 1856), German painter born in Hanau. From the final scene (Act III Scene 4). Manfred is with the Abbot of St Maurice when the unbidden spirit comes to claim him.]

Abbot. Alas! lost Mortal! what with guests like these
Hast thou to do? I tremble for thy sake:
Why doth he gaze on thee, and thou on him?
Ah! he unveils his aspect: on his brow
The thunder-scars are graven; from his eye
Glares forth the immortality of Hell—
Avaunt!—

Manfred.     Pronounce—what is thy mission?

Spirit.                                        Come!

Abbot. What art thou, unknown being? answer!—speak!

Spirit. The genius of this mortal.—Come! 'tis time.

Manfred. I am prepared for all things, but deny
The Power which summons me. Who sent thee here?

Spirit. Thou'lt know anon—Come! come!

Manfred.                    I have commanded
Things of an essence greater far than thine,
And striven with thy masters. Get thee hence!

Spirit. Mortal! thine hour is come— ...

(From Manfred, Act III Scene 4.)

(In this final scene Byron is channelling Faust again.) 

Act III has become quite theological. Manfred has taken the view that no-one else (specifically not the Church, and probably not God Himself) has the right to forgive him. If Manfred's own conscience condemns him as guilty, then he's guilty. (Which same argument, by the way, would also invalidate Astarte's forgiveness, had Manfred obtained it.)

And having rejected heavenly consolation, Manfred also rejects the power of Hell. Hell's tempters never tempted him, he claims. Hell hasn't won. His own mind (Man's mind) is immortal. He, Manfred, destroyed himself, he and he alone.

You could respond that this position betrays a rather inflated egotism. How reliable, actually, is an individual conscience? If you are the person who did great evil in the first place, what does this say about your own ability to know right from wrong? Doesn't it rather suggest, as the Witch said, 

...  a man of many thoughts,
And deeds of good and ill, extreme in both,
Fatal and fated in thy sufferings.

.... Someone who probably can't judge anything in a balanced way? Someone whose very first remorseful step, in mere justice if not in any hope, should be to submit themselves to someone else's guidance? Shouldn't that precious conscience be saying: I obviously can't be trusted to make better decisions than those plain unimpressive conventional people that I once felt so superior to?

And as for Hell's ministers, I think they would be very well content with victims who want to go on insisting that they never fell into temptation, but only tempted themselves. (The empire of Hell isn't bothered about gaining its citizens' consent.)

And, leaving aside theology, aren't we social beings ... even Manfred? We don't operate in a vacuum. Surely it's egotistical to say that what he did with Astarte was all down to his own unshared moral agency? Accepting responsibility is good, but not if it denies other people their moral agency, too. 

I don't say that the Abbot expresses these responses, nor even that Byron himself ever reckoned with them. But Manfred allows us to think them, as a good play should. 

*

Manfred is probably most known today for the music of Schumann and Tchaikovsky. 

The student Robert Schumann noted in his diary for 26 March 1829: "Bedtime reading: Byron's Manfred. A terrible night!"

By 1829 Manfred had already been translated into German four times; in Europe it was Byron's most celebrated work, as Peter Cochran says. (Being mostly in blank verse it was a lot more translatable than Childe Harold or Don Juan.)

Another German translation, by Karl Adolf Suckow, appeared in 1839. Suckow always had in mind a musical setting and in his introduction invited Felix Mendelssohn to take up the challenge, but it never happened and we don't know if Mendelssohn ever saw Suckow's book.

Anyway, Robert Schumann's Manfred: Dramatisches Gedicht in drei Abtheilungen (mainly composed in 1848) was "a dramatic poem with music" based on Suckow's translation, which Clara's mother had brought home. Liszt conducted the premier of the full work at Weimar in 1852. Schumann couldn't attend; he was seeing too many hallucinations by then. The dark, keening overture was much admired and is still frequently performed, but not so often the full work. Schumann designed it as a performance of the whole play (a somewhat cut-down version of Suckow), with fifteen musical episodes. He evidently planned for Manfred and the other human characters to be played by actors, not singers. In his musical settings it's only the spirits who sing; the human characters declaim (a form technically known as Melodramatisch).

Full libretto: https://www.flaminioonline.it/Guide/Schumann/Schumann-Manfred-testo.html . (But the text marks No 14 in the wrong place. The full score is on IMSLP.)

Here's a 2017 performance by the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest with the Groot Omroepkoor -- both Dutch ensembles. (The conductor, actors and soloists aren't credited; the Dutch commentator names them at the end, but too quickly for me to catch.) This performance contains all of Schumann's music. However it doesn't contain the whole text as given in the libretto; for instance, the characters of the Chamois Hunter and Manuel are dropped. Perhaps it makes use of the shorter connecting scenes that were prepared by Richard Pohl (1826 - 1896) to make concert performances more practicable.

Here's a list of the fifteen musical episodes, with their equivalent locations in Byron's poem.

Overture

Act I 

1. Gesang der Geister. Für Sopran, Alt, Tenor und Bass. "Dein Gebot zieht mich heraus" ("Mortal! to thy bidding bowed"). The speeches of the first four spirits (Act I Scene 1).

2. Ercheinung eines Zauberbildes. Melodramatisch. "O Gott, ist’s so, wenn du nicht Wahnbild" ("O God, if it be thus, and thou / Art not a madness and a mockery"). This is Manfred's exclamation when the seventh spirit appears in the form of a beautiful woman -- Act I Scene 1.

3. Geisterbannfluch. Für 4 Basstimmen. "Wenn der Mond auf stiller Welle" ("When the moon is on the wave"). The spirits' incantation, cursing Manfred (Act I Scene 1).

4. Alpenkuhreigen. Melodramatisch. "Horch, der Ton!" ("Hark! The note"). Manfred on the Jungfrau hears a shepherd's pipe (Act I Scene 2).

Act II

5. Zwischenaktmusik.

6. Rufung der Alpenfee. Melodramatisch. "Du schöner Geist mit deinem Haar" ("Beautiful spirit! With thy hair"). Manfred addressing the Witch of the Alps (Act II Scene 2).

7. Hymnus der Geister Ariman’s. Für Chor. "Heil unsrem Meister!" ("Hail to our Master!"). The hymn of the spirits to Arimanes  (Act II Scene 4).

8. Chorsatz. "Wirf in den Staub dich" ("Prostrate thyself"). The spirits addressing the intruder Manfred (Act II Scene 4).

9. Chorsatz. "Zermalmt den Wurm" ("Crush the worm!"). Their reaction when he refuses to bow to Arimanes (Act II Scene 4).

10. Geschwörung der Astarte. Melodramatisch. "Schatten! Geist! Was immer du seist" ("Shadow! or Spirit! Whatever thou art"). Invoking Astarte: Nemesis in the original, the Erste Parze here (Act II Scene 4).

11. Manfred’s Ansprache an Astarte. Melodramatisch. "O höre, hör’ mich. Astarte!" ("Hear me, hear me— Astarte!"). Manfred addressing Astarte (Act II Scene 4).

Act III

12. Melodramatisch. "Ein Friede kam auf mich" ("There is a calm upon me—"). Manfred's soliloquy (Act III Scene 1).

13. Abschied von der Sonne. Melodramatisch. "Glorreiche Scheibe" ("Glorious Orb!"). Manfred at the window, saying his farewell to the sun (Act III Scene 2).

14. Melodramatisch. "Blick’ nur hierher" ("Look there, I say"). Manfred and the Abbot, when the Spirit appears (Act III Scene 4).

15. Schluss-Scene. Klostergesang. Für Chor. "Requiem aeternam dona eis". A distant choir of monks -- Schumann's own idea -- is heard as Manfred dies (Act III Scene 4).

(I wonder how much you'd have to adapt Byron's original words to retrofit them to Schumann's settings? Happy to help!)

*

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Manfred: Symphonie  en quatre tableaux, d'après le poème dramatique de Byron (1885). 

Tchaikovsky's longest symphony, composed between the 4th and 5th symphonies and just as ferocious as they are, but comparatively rarely performed. 

The first movement depicts Manfred's alpine wanderings and his guilt-ridden quest for oblivion.

The lovely second movement scherzo depicts the Witch of the Alps in her vaporous waterfall.

The third movement andante depicts the simple life of mountain folk (like the piping shepherd and the Chamois Hunter).

The finale depicts Manfred's visit to the infernal hall of Arimanes, Astarte's pardon (i.e. according to Tchaikovsky, or maybe Stasov) and Manfred's death.

This is a performance from 1986 by the Oslo Philharmonic conducted by Mariss Jansons. 

*

Byron the swimmer

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

   Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

   Borne like thy bubbles, onward:  from a boy

   I wantoned with thy breakers—they to me

   Were a delight; and if the freshening sea

   Made them a terror—'twas a pleasing fear,

   For I was as it were a child of thee,

   And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.

(Childe Harold's Pilgrimage IV.184)

Chris Murray, "Byron, Sport and the Classics" [PDF]:

https://www.messolonghibyronsociety.gr/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Byron_Sport_and_the_Classics.pdf

Guy Howie on Byron's sporting and swimming feats:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/lord-byron-greatest-swims-across-europe-iconic-waterways/ .

I hugely enjoyed this post by "Richard" about Byron swimming the Hellespont, and I think you will too:

https://figures-of-speech.com/2018/05/byron.htm

Merrell Noden, "Lord of the Waterways", article in Sports Illustrated including more about the Venice swims. 

https://vault.si.com/vault/1987/05/25/lord-of-the-waterways-the-athletic-byron-was-poetry-in-motion-as-a-swimmer

 *

On Byron's The Corsair (1814):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2014/12/byron-corsair-1814.html

On Byron's Manfred (1817):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/07/manfred.html

On Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/08/childe-harold.html

On Byron's Sardanapalus (1821):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2025/06/byrons-sardanapalus-1821.html