![]() In these lines of ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ the poet engages with themes of change, the sea, and power. The latter is used to reference the power of the sea as well as humankind’s lack of power in the face of the indomitable ocean. ![]() It has raged the same since the dawn of creation, and no human force can control or tame it. This is something that brings the speaker great joy rather than fear. He relishes in the idea of what the ocean harbours and its ability to refuse humankind that which it desires. The sea represents true freedom to the speaker and to Byron. It’s untamed, pathless, and unpredictable, like the woods in which no one has ever tread. By the end of the poem, Byron admits that things have changed. He and his speaker are not the same as they were at the beginning of the poem, at the beginning of Byron’s journeys, or at the beginning of life. ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ by Lord Byron is a narrative poem separated into four parts. The poem is quite long, and this analysis only focuses on the final eleven stanzas, 178 through 186. The line numbers for this sectional 1594-1674. The poem is made up of four cantos that are written in Spenserian stanzas. The stanzas are eight lines long with a rhyme scheme of ABABBCBCC. They also use iambic pentameter in the first seven lines. The final line is an alexandrine or twelve syllables iambic line.īyron makes use of several literary devices in ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.’ These include but are not limited to anaphora, apostrophe, alliteration, and caesura. The latter is a formal device, one that’s concerned with the pauses that a poet inserts into their lines. In the case of this particular poem, the pauses are quite evident, seen through various types of punctuation, especially dashes. It reads, “Stops with the shore - upon the watery plain.” Or, another example, line one of stanza 181, reads, “The armaments which thunderstrike the walls.”Īlliteration and anaphora are both types of repetition. The first is concerned with the use and reuse of the same consonant sound at the beginning of words, while the latter is focused on the broader repetition of words at the beginning of lines. Anaphora can be seen in the first stanza. The words “There is” start the first three lines, and “From” start two more. I love not Man the less, but Nature more,įrom these our interviews, in which I steal There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, This might be someone whose deceased, an inanimate object, or in this case, the ocean (as seen in the first lines of stanza 179).Īnalysis of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Stanzas 178-186) Stanza 178Īlliteration can be seen in the first line of the poem with “pleasure” and “pathless” and in line three of stanza 182 with “waters washed.”Īn apostrophe occurs when the poet’s speaker talks to something or someone that cannot hear or respond to them. ![]() What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal. In the first line of this extract from the much longer ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ the poet’s famed lines describe the peace Byron (through his character Childe Harold) finds in nature. In the unexplored and uncontrolled woods, he takes pleasure in the freedom and the lack of structure. It’s there that he feels the most at home, despite how scary and isolating that natural landscape might seem. Out on the ocean, where most of this extract is focused, the speaker finds “society” or the togetherness that he’s unable to find among people. ![]() This is a traditional Romantic idea, one that fills the last lines of this long poem. When he’s by the sea, he finds that his love of Nature is bolstered. It is higher than his love of Man, but the latter also exists. ![]() From his time communing with nature, which in its own way, speaks back to him, he has come closer to understanding the universe. Byron feels that a deep connection with the natural world is the only way one can truly understand humanity’s purpose in the world. ![]()
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