Paperback in Time

Elegy on Thyrza

A/N- it is often assumed that Byron wrote this for a woman that he loved and lost. The truth is much more sad and (in my opinion) very socially relevant. He wrote this to a man he loved with intense passion, then lost while he was away. His name was John Edleston. Byron made the subject of the poem neutral and the title Thyrza, because people would naturally assume then that it was a woman. Very sad that he could not mourn his loss completely and in the open. 

Things have gotten much better since then, but we still have a VERY long way to go. I hope this poem reminds people of the necessity of change and the importance of never becoming complacent in the journey to become a unified human race. The Journey of the Evolution of Spirit and Understanding is ever ongoing. Don't tarry on the track- lest you get left behind in the dust of a past so abhorrent that no one will bother to remember or write of your shame in books to be taught to children who FINALLY. KNOW. BETTER.

x

And thou art dead, as young and fair

    As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft and charms so rare

    Too soon return'd to Earth!

Though Earth received them in her bed,

And o'er the spot the crowd may tread

    In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook

A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low,

    Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,

    So I behold them not:

It is enough for me to prove

That what I loved and long must love

    Like common earth can rot.

To me there needs no stone to tell

'Tis nothing that I loved so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last,

    As fervently as thou,

Who didst not change through all the past

    And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal

Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

    Nor falsehood disavow:

And, what were worse, thou canst not see

Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

The better days of life were ours;

    The worst can be but mine:

The sun that cheers, the storm that lours,

    Shall never more be thine.

The silence of that dreamless sleep

I envy now too much to weep;

    Nor need I to repine

That all those charms have pass'd away

I might have watch'd through long decay.

The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd

    Must fall the earliest prey;

Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,

    The leaves must drop away.

And yet it were a greater grief

To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,

    Than see it pluck'd today;

Since earthly eye but ill can bear

To trace the change to foul from fair.

I know not if I could have borne

    To see thy beauties fade;

The night that follow'd such a morn

    Had worn a deeper shade:

Thy day without a cloud hath past,

And thou wert lovely to the last,

    Extinguish'd, not decay'd;

As stars that shoot along the sky

Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept, if I could weep,

    My tears might well be shed,

To think I was not near, to keep

    One vigil o'er thy bed:

To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,

To fold thee in a faint embrace,

    Uphold thy drooping head;

And show that love, however vain,

Nor thou nor I can feel again.

Yet how much less it were to gain,

    Though thou hast left me free,

The loveliest things that still remain

    Than thus remember thee!

The all of thine that cannot die

Through dark and dread Eternity

    Returns again to me,

And more thy buried love endears

Than aught except its living years.

-BYRON-