Mazeppa: A Poem

Lord Byron

Description

“Mazeppa” is a 1819 narrative poem composed by the seminal English romantic poet Lord Byron. Based on a popular legend concerning the early life of Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709), it describes how the young Mazeppa had a love affair with a Polish Countess named Theresa during his time spent as a page in the Court of King John II Casimir Vasa. The Countess Theresa was, however, married and, upon discovering the affair, her husband punishes Mazeppa by stripping him and tying him to a wild horse. George Gordon Byron (1788 – 1824), commonly known as Lord Byron, was a British poet, politician, peer, and important figure of the Romantic movement. He is hailed as one of the most influential British poets and is continued to be widely read and influential. His most famous works include the poems “Don Juan” and “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Sujets

• Themes
• Subjects
• Poetry
• Erotica
• Love

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528768689
• Langue: English

Extrait

MAZEPPA,
A POEM.

BY LORD BYRON.
Contents
Mazeppa
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Mazeppa
Ode
Ode
A Fragment
A Fragment
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron was born in London, England in 1788. His mother was abandoned by her husband when Byron was two years old, and she took her son to Aberdeen, where they lived in considerable poverty for some years. Byron had a club foot, and was taunted in school, turning to writing at a young age to cope with this bullying. In 1798, aged just ten, he inherited the estates of his great uncle, Lord Byron, and moved with his mother first to the ruinous Newstead Abbey, then to nearby Nottingham. He started his education a year later, eventually enrolling at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Byron published his first poetic work, Fugitive Pieces (1806), at the age of just eighteen. Three years later, he began his Grand Tour of Europe (at that time a traditional trip undertaken by mainly upper-class young men of means) in the company of John Cam Hobhouse. Byron visited most of the Mediterranean, as well as Constantinople and what was then believed to be the site of the ancient city of Troy. He returned to England in 1811, publishing his exotic travelogue Childe Harold s Pilgrimage a year later. The work was an instant success, the first edition selling out in three days.
Over the next few years, Byron continued to publish a number of verse narratives, including The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair and The Prisoner of Chillon . In 1816, he separated from his wife of just one year, with the cause supposedly relating to her revelation to her nursery governess that Byron had practised sodomy on her. In the same year, aged 28, he left England, never to return.
Byron visited Switzerland, staying at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, where he composed the third canto of Childe Harold , and where Percy Shelley, his wife Mary Shelley and her half-sister Claire Clairmont visited him during the summer. Later that year, he moved to Venice, where he began a now-notorious lifestyle of debauchery with numerous local women. In the summer of 1818, he completed the first section of what would become his magnum opus, Don Juan . His publishers in England insisted it would never get printed, but he persisted. In 1819, Byron married again, this time to an Italian Countess, and became involved in the Italian struggle against Austrian rule.
In 1821, Byron published the poetic dramas Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari , and Cain . He also completed Don Juan - his most famous work, and now considered one of the most important long poems published in England since John Milton s Paradise Lost . In 1823, Byron - a lifelong supporter of national liberation, and opponent of colonialism - was contracted by the London Greek Committee to aid the Greeks with their War of Independence from the Turks. Arriving in Cephalonia, an island off the mainland of Greece, he spent 4000 (about 200,000 in modern terms) of his own funds to enable part of the Greek fleet to relieve the town of Missolonghi, before becoming commander of a planned attack on the Turkish held fort at Lepanto. However, Byron died in April of that year (1826), following a series of fevers and fits. He was just 36 years old.
During his lifetime, Byron was celebrated for his excesses - huge debts, constant travel, numerous love affairs, opium use, and self-imposed exile. The Byronic hero - an idealistic but flawed character in possession of both passionate talent and a self-destructive nature - is now a fixture of Western literature. Byron is now regarded as one of the greatest British poets; in Greece, he remains a national hero.
MAZEPPA .
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CELUI qui remplissait alors cette place, tait un gentilhomme Polonais, nomm Mazeppa, n dans le palatinat de Padolie; il avait t lev page de Jean Casimir, et avait pris sa cour quelque teinture des belles-lettres. Une intrigue qu il eut dans sa jeunesse avec la femme d un gentilhomme Polonais, ayant t d couverte, le mari le fit lier tout nu sur un cheval farouche, et le laissa aller en cet tat. Le cheval, qui tait du pays de l Ukraine, y retourna, et y porta Mazeppa, demi-mort de fatigue et de faim. Quelque paysans le secoururent: il resta long-tems parmi eux, et se signala dans plusieurs courses contre les Tartares. La sup riorit de ses lumi res lui donna une grande consid ration parmi les Cosaques: sa r putation s augmentant de jour en jour, obligea le Czar le faire Prince de l Ukraine. -V OLTAIRE , Histoire de Charles XII . p. 196.
Le roi fuyant et poursuivi eut son cheval tu sous lui; le Colonel Gieta, bless , et perdant tout sa sang, lui donna le sien. Ainsi on remit deux fois cheval, dans la suite, ce conqu rant qui n avait pu y monter pendant la bataille. V OLTAIRE , Hist, de Charles XII . p. 216.
Le roi alla par un autre chemin avec quelques cavaliers. Le carrosse, o il tait, rompit dans la marche; on le remit cheval. Pour comble de disgrace, il s gara pendant la nuit dans un bois; l , son courage ne pouvant plus suppl er ses forces puis es, les douleurs de sa blessure devenues plus insupportable par la fatigue, son cheval tant tomb de lassitude, il se coucha quelques heures au pied d un arbre, en danger d tre surpris tout moment par les vainqueurs qui le cherchaient de tout c t s. -V OLTAIRE , Histoire de Charles XII . p. 218.
MAZEPPA.

I.
TWAS after dread Pultowa s day,
When fortune left the royal Swede,
Around a slaughter d army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The power and glory of the war,
Faithless as their vain votaries, men,
Had pass d to the triumphant Czar,
And Moscow s walls were safe again,
Until a day more dark and drear,
And a more memorable year, 10
Should give to slaughter and to shame
A mightier host and haughtier name;
A greater wreck, a deeper fall,
A shock to one-a thunderbolt to all.
II.
Such was the hazard of the die;
The wounded Charles was taught to fly
By day and night through field and flood,
Stain d with his own and subjects blood;
For thousands fell that flight to aid:
And not a voice was heard t upbraid 20
Ambition in his humbled hour,
When truth had nought to dread from power.
His horse was slain, and Gieta gave
His own-and died the Russians slave.
This too sinks after many a league
Of well sustain d, but vain fatigue;
And in the depth of forests, darkling,
The watch-fires in the distance sparkling-
The beacons of surrounding foes-
A king must lay his limbs at length. 30
Are these the laurels and repose
For which the nations strain their strength?
They laid him by a savage tree,
In out-worn nature s agony;
His wounds were stiff-his limbs were stark-
The heavy hour was chill and dark;
The fever in his blood forbade
A transient slumber s fitful aid:
And thus it was; but yet through all,
Kinglike the monarch bore his fall, 40
And made, in this extreme of ill,
His pangs the vassals of his will;
All silent and subdued were they,
As once the nations round him lay.
III.
A band of chiefs!-alas! how few,
Since but the fleeting of a day
Had thinn d it; but this wreck was true
And chivalrous: upon the clay
Each sate him down, all sad and mute,
Beside his monarch and his steed, 50
For danger levels man and brute,
And all are fellows in their need.
Among the rest, Mazeppa made
His pillow in an old oak s shade-
Himself as rough, and scarce less old,
The Ukraine s hetman, calm and bold;
But first, outspent with this long course,
The Cossack prince rubb d down his horse,
And made for him a leafy bed,
And smooth d his fetlocks and his mane, 60
And slack d his girth, and stripp d his rein,
And joy d to see how well he fed;
For until now he had the dread
His wearied courser might refuse
To browze beneath the midnight dews:
But he was hardy as his lord,
And little cared for bed and board;
But spirited and docile too;
Whate er was to be done, would do.
Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb, 70
All Tartar-like he carried him;
Obey d his voice, and came at call,
And knew him in the midst of all:
Though thousands were around,-and Night,
Without a star, pursued her flight,-
That steed from sunset until dawn
His chief would follow like a fawn.