are you byronic?

The Byronic hero. Moody. Conflicted. Introspective. Self-critical. Struggles with integrity. Hates social institutions and social norms. Exiles, outcasts, or outlaws. No respect for rank and privilege. Cynical, demanding, arrogant, and haunted by a troubled past. A loner, often rejected from society, often self-destructive…and has troubles with sexual identity.

Would you like to be a Byronic hero?

The Byronic hero was established by — who else but the handsome, extravagant, and notoriously bisexual  — George Gordon Byron, more commonly known simply as Lord Byron. This character figured largely in most of his works, I’d say he was probably translating much of his own personality into his heroes.

Anyways, why am I talking about Byron? With my mind in its current statis (i.e. I want to write poetry but I can’t because my mind is anything but poetic these days), I thought I’d read up on some of my favorite poets, and in my reading I came across a Byron poem; beautifully romantic (well he was one of the leading Romanticists) and rather…uhm…Byronic? 

Reading up on his life, I thought he must’ve been a fun guy to be with, and that if I’d been alive in that period I’d have thoroughly enjoyed his company…well as long as I didn’t become the object of his desires. LOL. My, but he was brazen. They say he once bragged that he had sex with 250 women in Venice over a year. Some of the allegations directed at him were incest and sodomy right along with his actual bisexuality. Hahaha, if he had lived in our time, he’d have thoroughly enjoyed himself…but then again, he wouldn’t be half as famous, there’d be way too many people like him!

OK now I better post a poem to end this entry…I am sorely tempted to post Byron’s Epitaph to a Dog, a poem he wrote for his dog Boatswain’s grave marker (lol)…but I think I’ll go with The First Kiss of Love. 

Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,

          Those tissues of falsehood which Folly has wove;

Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,

          Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with fantasy glow,

Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove;

From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,

Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love.

If Apollo should e’er his assistance refuse,

Or the Nine be dispos’d from your service to rove,

Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the Muse,

And try the effect, of the first kiss of love.

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art,

Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove;

I court the effusions that spring from the heart,

Which throbs, with delight, to the first kiss of love.

Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes,

Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move:

Arcadia displays but a region of dreams;

What are visions like these, to the first kiss of love?

Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,

From Adam, till now, has with wretchedness strove;

Some portion of Paradise still is on earth,

And Eden revives, in the first kiss of love.

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.