Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was a really enjoyable poetic journey through the wonders of Europe’s nature and classical world. Byron writes of a melancholic pilgrim who self-exiles himself from England and embarks on a journey across Portugal, Spain, Greece, Albania, Switzerland and Italy, focusing on its nature and once great empires.

A love of literature and the poets is appreciated and mourned, as is the loss of classical civilisation and its beauty, hence resulting on many a callback to Greek and Roman mythology. There is also focus on still ongoing issues of ownership, such as a criticism of England’s claim to the Elgin marbles where Byron argues they should be returned to Greece, this sense of ownership also being related to the likes of the tombs of Dante and Boccacio resting outside of Florence. The fact that 150 years later the Elgin marbles are still a cultural debate really resonated. Byron’s musing over the loss of old empire was beautiful. 

The poem was disjointed in places however, the vignettes of countries existing with no depiction of how Childe Harold travelled between them, nor was the purpose of his pilgrimage ever explained beyond a self-exile. I will leave on the line “I am as a weed” because that simple self discovery stood out as my favourite part of the poem.