Dear object of defeated care! Though now of Love and thee bereft, To reconcile me with despair Thine image and my tears are left. 'Tis said with Sorrow Time can cope; But this I feel can ne'er be true: For by the death-blow of my Hope My Memory immortal grew.
Confirmed with The Works of Lord Byron. Poetry. Volume III, ed. by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, London: John Murray, 1904.
Note below the poem from this edition: "[These lines are copied from a leaf of the original MS. of the Second Canto of Childe Harold. They are headed, "Lines written beneath the Picture of J. U. D." In a curious work of doubtful authority, entitled, The Life, Writings, Opinions and Times of the Right Hon. G. G. Noel Byron, London, 1825 (iii. 123-132), there is a long and circumstantial narrative of a "defeated" attempt of Byron's to rescue a Georgian girl, whom he had bought in the slave-market for 800 piastres, from a life of shame and degradation. It is improbable that these verses suggested the story; and, on the other hand, the story, if true, does afford some clue to the verses.]
Authorship:
- by George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron (1788 - 1824), "Lines written beneath a Picture", written 1811, appears in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a Romaunt: and other Poems, in Poems [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- [ None yet in the database ]
Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:
- Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist ; composed by Franz Xaver Mozart.
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Malcolm Wren [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2018-01-24
Line count: 8
Word count: 53