Italy-Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa 1819-1822
Italy - Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa
Ravenna 1819-1821
Of Byron's lifestyle in Ravenna we know more from Percy Shelley, who documented some of its more colorful aspects in a letter: "Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual custom ... at 12. After breakfast we sit talking till six. From six to eight we gallop through the pine forest which divide Ravenna from the sea; we then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don't suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. Lord B.'s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it.. .. [P.S.] I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective ... . I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before they were changed into these shapes."
Shelley, Percy (1964). Letters: Shelley in Italy. Clarendon Press. p. 330
Grèce Map. Byron Society Collection.
Don Juan, Cantos III, IV, and V
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron. Don Juan, Cantos III, IV, and V. London: Printed by Thomas Davison, 1821.
Byron Society Collection.
Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice. An Historical Tragedy, The Prophecy of Dante, a Poem
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron. Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice. An Historical Tragedy, in Five Acts. With notes. The Prophecy of Dante, a Poem. 1st (1st issue) ed. London: John Murray, 1821.
Rare Book Collection.
Sardanapalus, A Tragedy; The Two Foscari, A Tragedy; Cain, A Mystery
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron. Sardanapalus, A Tragedy; The Two Foscari, A Tragedy; Cain, A Mystery. London: John Murray, 1821.
Rare Book Collection.
Pisa and Genoa 1821-1822
"In 1822 Werner and The Vision of Judgement were published and in that year his daughter Allegra died. Byron, with Teresa and her family, left for Leghorn, where Leigh Hunt joined them. Hunt and Byron cooperated in the production of The Liberal magazine."
Byron, George Gordon in The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature
The Works of Lord Byron, Comprehending the Suppressed Poems
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron. The Works of Lord Byron, Comprehending the Suppressed Poems. Embellished with a Portrait, and a Sketch of his Life. Vol. XII. Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1822.
Byron Society Collection.
And this is in the night:-Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight-
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again 'tis black, -and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, Canto the Third, XCIII.
The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South. 1st (1st issue) ed. 2 vols. London: John Hunt, 1822-1823.
Byron Society Collection.
Werner, A Tragedy
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron. Werner, A Tragedy. 1st (1st issue) ed. London: John Murray, 1823.
Byron Society Collection.
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages; and the crown
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His life, his fame, his grew, though rifled- not thine
own.
Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed
His dust--and lies it not her great among,
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?
That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech? No;-even his tomb
Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigots' wrong,
No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for WHOM?
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, Canto the Fourth, LV11-LVII.