George Gordon Byron Zitate

Brief vom 1. Mai 1821
Original engl.: "what is […] democracy? — an Aristocracy of Blackguards."

Don Juan, 13. Gesang C
Original engl.: "Youth fades, and leaves our days no longer sunny; // We tire of mistresses and parasites; // But oh, ambrosial cash! Ah! who would lose thee? // When we no more can use, or even abuse thee!"

Don Juan, 2. Gesang CLXXII
Original engl.: "all who joy would win // Must share it, — Happiness was born a twin."

Die Niederlage des Sanherib (The Destruction of Sennacherib) II
Original engl.: "For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, // And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd, // And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill, // And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"

Der Giaur (The Giaour)
Original engl.: "For Freedom's battle once begun, // Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son, // Though baffled oft is ever won."

Don Juan, 13. Gesang XXXV
Original engl.: "Indifference certes don't produce distress; // And rash enthusiasm in good society // Were nothing but a moral inebriety."

Don Juan, 13. Gesang XL
Original engl.: "while life's thin thread's spun out // Between the gaping heir and gnawing gout"

aus Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Übersetzung: Nino Barbieri.
Original engl.: "In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, // And silent rows the songless gondolier."), Poets http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16149 (Stand 17/08

Letzte Worte, 19. April 1824, The Works of Lord Byron: Embracing His Suppressed Poems, and a Sketch of His Life, Phillips, Sampson and company, S. 13
Original engl.: "Now I shall go to sleep. Goodnight."

Childe Harold

Childe Harolds Pilgerfahrt (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage), 1. Gesang 9
Original engl.: "Maidens, like moths, are ever caughty by glare"

Variante: And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.

L'Amitié est l'Amour sans Ailes, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Quelle: The Giaour (1813), Line 969.

Dedication.
The Corsair (1814)

Stanza 4.
The Dream (1816)

Memorandum reference to the instantaneous success of Childe Harold and quoted in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron by Thomas Moore (1830), chapter 14.

When We Two Parted (1808), st. 4.
Kontext: In secret we met
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

She Walks in Beauty http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-SWB42.htm, st. 1. The subject of these lines was Mrs. R. Wilmot.—Berry Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 7.
Hebrew Melodies (1815)

When We Two Parted (1808), st. 4.

Quelle: Don Juan

I.
Prometheus (1816)
Kontext: Titan! to whom immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Canto I, stanza 1.
The Corsair (1814)
Kontext: O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, 22
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
These are our realms, no limit to their sway,—
Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.

Churchill's Grave http://mykeep.com/lordbyron/churchillsgrave.html, l. 43.

II.
Prometheus (1816)
Kontext: Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity
Was thine — and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

III.
Prometheus (1816)
Kontext: Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself — and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can decry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

Act I, scene i.
Manfred (1817)
Kontext: Mont Blanc is the Monarch of mountains;
They crowned him long ago,
On a throne of rocks — in a robe of clouds –
With a Diadem of Snow.

III.
Prometheus (1816)
Kontext: Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself — and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can decry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

St. 5.
The Age of Bronze (1823)
Kontext: While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven,
Or drawing from the no less kindled earth
Freedom and peace to that which boasts his birth;
While Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er
Shall sink while there's an echo left to air.

St. 3.
The Age of Bronze (1823)
Kontext: Where is he, the champion and the child
Of all that's great or little, wise or wild;
Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones;
Whose table earth — whose dice were human bones?

The First Kiss of Love http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-FKL44.html, st. 7 (1806).
Kontext: When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past—
For years fleet away with the wings of the dove—
The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.

Act IV, scene 1.
Sardanapalus (1821)
Kontext: I am the very slave of circumstance
And impulse — borne away with every breath!
Misplaced upon the throne — misplaced in life.
I know not what I could have been, but feel
I am not what I should be — let it end.

III.
Prometheus (1816)
Kontext: Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself — and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can decry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

Act IV, scene 1.
Sardanapalus (1821)
Kontext: But take this with thee: if I was not form'd
To prize a love like thine, a mind like thine,
Nor dote even on thy beauty — as I've doted
On lesser charms, for no cause save that such
Devotion was a duty, and I hated
All that look'd like a chain for me or others
(This even rebellion must avouch); yet hear
These words, perhaps among my last — that none
E'er valued more thy virtues, though he knew not
To profit by them…

II.
Prometheus (1816)
Kontext: Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity
Was thine — and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Inscription on the monument of a Newfoundland dog http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-dog63.htm (1808).
Kontext: Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the virtues of Man, without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
If inscribed over human ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG