Resumo de Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

In 1807 Byron's first collection of poetry, Hours Of Idleness appeared. It received bad reviews. The poet answered his critics with the satire English Bards And Scotch Reviewersin 1808. Next year he took his seat in the House of Lords, and set out on his grand tour, visiting Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece, and the Aegean. Real poetic success came in 1812 when Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818). He became an adored character of London society; he spoke in the House of Lords effectively on liberal themes, and had a hectic love-affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron's The Corsair (1814), sold 10,000 copies on the first day of publication. He married Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815, and their daughter Ada was born in the same year. The marriage was unhappy, and they obtained legal separation next year.I got trapped in bonds of comprehension to one poem from Lord Byron. Merely a vague lineament did I see, so hard for me to translate it...Can you please give me your understanding of it, especially for the first two stanzas! Here it is: [FONT=Franklin Gothic Medium]Youth and Age There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay; ?Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past. Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess: The Magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never stretch again. Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down; It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own; That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tear, And though the eye may sparkle still, ?tis where the ice appears. Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; ?Tis but as ivy leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath. O could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been, Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanish'd scene,--- As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be, So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to meChilde Harold takes the same journey as Byron had just taken, and the line between the poet's own meditations and those he attributes to his pilgrim is rarely easy to draw. Canto the Fourth was written in 1817 and first published in 1818. Byron here uses his travels in Italy as poetic material without resorting to the fictional hero, Harold. "It was in vain that I asserted, and imagined I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have done so" (Byron's "Preface" to Canto the Fourth).Childe: an archaic title of courtesy once given to a nobleman's eldest son.Byron's daughter Ada was born in December 1815. He had not seen her since she was five weeks old.

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