Commentary on extract from 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by Lord Byron

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

This extract form the poem ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ by Lord Byron expresses the spiritual journey that the character Childe Harold is going through, and how the beauty of nature is spoiled. In this extract the character is reflecting on the raw beauty of nature, and on the destructive behavior of humans on nature. Through this poem the emotions and the tone change from meditative to powerful and angry. These changes are revealed through diction, imagery, and the structure.

The vivid imagery created by Lord Byron through the poem helps the readers to experience a dramatic picture full of emotions and feelings that the character developed through out the poem. In the first stanza the poet describes the raw beauty of nature, such as ‘deep sea’, ‘music in its roar’. This description in the introductive stanza helps to create the lonely meditative mood that the character is going through in his spiritual journey. As the emotions evolve into stronger and angrier emotions the images become more aggressive and powerful, setting this change is the first line in the second stanza as Harold addresses the ‘deep’, ‘dark blue’ ocean. The line ‘A shadow of a man’s ravage’ helps the readers to imagine the man as evil and vile. Using the simile ‘like a drop of water’ to compare the size of the man to the ocean’s size shows how insignificant humans are to nature. Also the sound of the human sinking reveals the pain that man endures when sinking in the powerful and big ocean.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Contributing to the vivid imagery is the accurate use of diction, which in this poem has been in great use. As said before the first stanza portrays the lonely meditation that Harold is going through, and the diction in this stanza starts with the description of the ‘pathless woods’ and ‘lonely shore’ with repetition of the diction ‘There is’ to help set the reader’s mood into the meditative setting. Also the use of the line ‘mingle with the universe’ helps to create the meditative image. As the emotions change with the second stanza, the repetitive use of the demanding diction ‘roll’ gives the character power and control. Also the power of nature upon man (as to disgrace him) is shown in three consecutive dictions, ‘unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown’, this helps in revealing the human’s insignificance compared to nature. In the last stanza the action dictions are used to help reveal the confidence and assurance that the character has towards his judgment that indeed humans ruin the earth, thus demanding nature to punish humans for their ruins, using dictions as ‘shake’, ‘spurning’ and ‘dashest’. Also these words in their lines reveal the harsh punishment that humans deserve according to Harold.

Nevertheless, the structure of the poem supports the imagery and diction to fulfill the captured emotions and feelings through out the poem. The poem is a form of Spenserian stanzas that contains nine lines each with eight lines iambic pentameter followed by a single Alexandrine line in iambic hexameter; and the rhyme scheme of these lines is “ababbcbcc”. This stanzaic structure helps the poet to change the mood from one stanza to another, yet the rhyme scheme helps to blend the different thoughts in each stanza in a smooth way. There are two apparent stops in the second stanza which reveals afterward a confident statement or demand of action, thus revealing the power held by the character.

With the use of these techniques, strong and confident emotions and thoughts are expresses by the poet through the character, uncovering the great technicality and the bare emotions of the poet in his work. Thus allowing his main idea to flow through out the poem which is the journey of Childe Harold discovering how the beauty of nature is spoiled by man.

Word Count: 634