My Soul Is Dark: An Imitation of My Favorite Romantic, George Gordon (Lord Byron)
- joybragi84
- 20 minutes ago
- 2 min read
As I was looking back through my revisions of Atheists and Empty Spaces, I noticed today that I had skipped a poem in the revision process between No Access to My Pain and He Says There Is No God. The short poem happens to be one of my favorites because it is based on a poem by the poet that I think is the greatest of the English Romantics, George Gordon, who is also known as Lord Byron. I know! I know! Probably every literature scholar in the history of scholarship would say, "Are you crazy? With Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, you are going to argue for Bryon?" My answer is yes. Byron short poems were hit-or-miss with a lot more misses that hits. In fact, She Walks in Beauty is the only short poem of Byron's that I can think of right off the bat that has any merit at all. Oh! And the poem that I copied My Soul Is Dark. However, if you consider and add up all the wonderfully poignant, beautiful, and inspirational lines that can be found scattered rather thickly throughout Childe Harold, Don Juan, The Bride of Abydos, The Giaour, and numerous other long poems, you end up with four or five times as many memorable lines as Keats and Shelley and at least twice as many as Wordsworth or Coleridge. The lines just happen to be embedded in longer poems that are not read much any more. I wish that I could teach a class just on Don Juan. Oh! And someone needs to make a movie about the story too. It would be awesome if done well.
Anyhow, I also give credit to Leonard Cohen here because, after I wrote the poem and reread it, I thought, "You know those last two lines sound incredibly like Cohen's song Hallelujah." I did not intend that to happen, but it did, and I have listened to Jeff Buckley's version of Cohen's song so many times that it probably had some influence on my thought.
Anyway, here is the short, skipped over poem. As always, ENJOY!
My Soul Is Dark
For Lord Byron and Leonard Cohen
I.
My soul is dark—All that I feel
Vibrates my ears or lights my eyes.
It’s not an obsolete ideal
Of giant gods in empty skies.
If I, some hope, may yet maintain,
It must be in the drive of Man,
And in the vigor of the brain
To master that which it can scan.
II.
Yet in Man’s mind, a tune cuts deep,
A voice, a hum that must be heard,
That rouses doubters from their sleep
To search for an unerring word,
A true word silenced far too long,
Or not a word, a perfect chord,
And not one note, but the whole song
Like David played to please his lord.
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