'When We Two Parted'
-Lord Byron
Literary Devices
Metaphor
Line 17+18- “the name thee before me, all knell to mine ear” (Aresi, F, 2019).
Repetition
Line 2 and 32- “Silence and tears”
The repetition of “silence and tears” at the beginning and end of the poem shows the poet’s inability to leave his moment of pain behind (Aresi, F, 2019).
Anaphora
Line 25+26- “In secret we met, in silence I great” (Aresi, F, 2019).
Poet
George Gordon/ Lord Byron
(22 January 1788—19 April 1824)(Encyclopædia Britannica, 2020)
English Poet
Poet in the romantic moment (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2020)
Analysis
The title of the poem- The poem deals with the end of a relationship that the narrator, thought to be Lord Byron himself feels sad and regretful about. Throughout the poem Byron express his feelings for the woman and the relation between them (Aresi, F, 2019).
Voice- It is said that it is his own experience so we assume the voice is Lord’s Byron’s (Aresi, F, 2019).
Tone- The poem begins with the bleak tone of despair. Immediately the reader is introduced to the speaker’s “silence and tears” (line 2) upon the breakup.
Her own reaction is to grow cold—the physical description of her cheek as “cold” and “pale” hints at sickness, but her “colder” kiss (line 6) implies an emotional detachment growing from the very moment of their parting, which Byron finds unbearable (Aresi, F, 2019).
Themes
Sadness
Tears, broken hearts, sorrow—and that's just the first stanza. Sadness is everywhere in the poem. The speaker was sad when he had to say goodbye to his friend, and he's still sad now, in the present as he writes the poem.
Even though he writes about it, the speaker's sadness is something he keeps from his friends ("in silence I grieve"), for reasons that remain unclear. If he ever sees this girl again he will show her how sad he still is by crying in front of her (and not saying anything).
Death
Nobody dies for real in this poem, but death is still all over the place. The poem is about the death of a relationship—that's what saying goodbye for a long time is, after all: a kind of death.
Moreover, when the speaker says goodbye to his friend, she turns into what looks like a corpse (she's cold and pale). Whenever the woman's name is mentioned, the speaker thinks of death ("knell"), and he feels a little dead himself.
Love
The poet can not get over saying goodbye to this person—there must be love involved.
The poem is about what happens when love doesn't go so well—when the relationship ends, and how the pain continues.
(Shmoop, 2008)
Rhyme
The poem is lyric poem with a rhyme scheme ABABCDCD (Aresi, F, 2019).
Many believe the poem was written in 1816, that was also the date it was published (GradeSaver, 2018).