“funny how morning turns a love to shame/ disguised and disfigured/ you thought i tasted like rain”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

“We’ll go no more a-roving,” Lord Byron

So, we’ll go no more a-roving
    So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
    And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
    And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
    And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
    And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
    By the light of the moon.


Written 1817 when Byron was 29, while recovering from his first Carnival season in Venice, in a letter sent to Thomas Moore. It remained unpublished until Moore, as Byron’s literary executor, published Letters and Journals of Lord Byron in 1830, after which it was added to editions of Byron’s collected poems. Its refrain is adapted from “The Jolly Beggar,” a traditional Scottish song (Byron’s mother was a Scot). (TIL current Baron Byron, the 13th of that office, published a novel in 2021, the first Baron Byron to publish a book since The Byron.)

---L.

Subject quote from Every Little Bit, Patty Griffin.

Comments

[conuly]

Roving has most assuredly been his ru-i-in.

[de_eekhoorn]

...I put this one to music when I was in high school. I still occasionally hum it.

[larryhammer]

Joining a long tradition of people setting it. Do you have a recording or sheet music you're willing to share?