LORD BYRON’S CONCEPT OF
SOLITUDE
Lord Byron (1788-1824) was one of the
greatest romantic poets, the others
being John Keats, P. B. Shelley, William
Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge; he
shared with whom an intense love of nature.
According to the literary historian Arthur
Compton Rickett, in style and temperament Byron is a curious blend of the age
of satire and the age of romanticism.
Dictionaries define solitude as loneliness, isolation, speculation and
desolation.
Lord Byron’s concept is different.
He believes that in solitude we are least alone, especially when we are close
to nature. In his poem entitled “Solitude” which is reproduced below, he argues that : true solitude is not physical
aloneness but emotional abandonment.
Given below is the full poem. It contrasts
both types of solitude :”a restorative, chosen solitude in nature where one
communes with landscapes and wilderness, and the other a corrosive isolation
experienced amid crowds when social ties prove hollow.”
Solitude
To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.
But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
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G.R.Kanwal
6th November 2025
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