When We Two Parted by Lord Byron, Summary

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The poem titled “When We Two Parted,” by the British poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), describes the speaker’s growing distance from, and disillusionment with, a person (presumably a woman) whom he once loved. The poem seems to have been inspired by Byron’s own erstwhile affection for Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, who eventually had an affair with the Duke of Wellington and who thus became the subject of unfriendly gossip. Ironically, it is easy to imagine Byron himself as the focus of the kind of gossip to which this poem alludes, and it is also easy to imagine him as the source of a speaker’s disappointment and disillusionment. Part of the poem’s effectiveness, in fact, is that the attitudes and feelings it expresses seem universal rather than merely private. In other words, the poem deals with a situation and with emotions to which most people can relate. It is a poem about lost love—one of the most archetypal of all topics. The poem is effective whether or not one knows about the autobiographical connection with Lady Webster. The opening stanza is especially well constructed. Each of the first four lines has five syllables, leading us to expect a continuation of that pattern. However, the pattern suddenly and unpredictably breaks down in line 5, when the speaker abruptly shifts from five syllables to six, so that the crucial word “cold” receives very strong metrical emphasis. The last words in each of the first five lines are all rich with implications, but the last word of the fifth line receives special stress. The reason(s) for the lovers’ parting is never made explicit, and thus we cannot be sure precisely why the woman’s cheek grew “cold.” Was she upset by the parting, as her tears might suggest? Or had she begun to lose her affection for the speaker? The fact that her kiss became “Colder” (6) suggests as much, but we cannot be entirely sure.
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