When we two parted

Context

author - Lord Byron

  • brought up in poverty until inheriting riches at 10

  • went to Trinity College, Cambridge

  • popular Romantic poet

  • had a lot of relationships

  • popular with woman

  • died at 36

this poem is about his affair with a high class woman which he had to break off to save her status, later on he found that she had an affair while they were together. So he wrote this poem out of jealousy

Form & Structure

Lyric Poetry

emotional poems where the poet expresses their thoughts and feelings. Byron is exploring the feelings of heartbreak

Accentual Verse

Each line has the same number of stressed syllables, however lines 5 and 7 break these rules and have 3 stressed syllables. This is the moment in the poem where Byron is rejected by his lover and realises she doesn’t love him. These feelings of rejection and heartbreak and reflected in the structure as the accentual verse is broken

Rhyme Scheme

the rhyme at the start of the poem follows that of a Shakespearean Sonnet, however it’s broken off at “Thy vows are all broken”. This could imply that he now changes his old loving opinion of her (as he found out about her affair) and is now angry at her.

Tenses

In the poem there is the past, present, and future tense. With this Byron could be showing how these feelings are going to stay with him forever

Repetition “With silence and tears”

this repetition at the start and end of the poem helps create a cyclical structure, this could reflect how everlasting and repetitive Byron’s feelings are, he feels unable to move on from this heartbreak, he feels stuck

Language

knell (death bell)

this could be used to present how all the loving feelings Byron had towards his lover are now dead. This level of sadness could show how he did love her