“I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;”
But when the poem is showing us more accurately the action that is taking place,
the process from light to darkness, from live to death, the tone becomes faster
from calm to rush “like a clock gone wild”
)
with blank verses using mid-line
pauses which gives the sense of wildness, time without control, everything
happening quickly without control, absolutely chaos:
“Till hunger clung them or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,”
This is the pattern used throughout all the middle part of the poem, but at the
end of the poem the structure of iambic pentameters and calm tome is used
again, like “the calm after the storm; time runs down slowly to its final end.” The
time stopping slowly until the destruction is completed and the darkness is
covering everything:
“The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.”
Punctuation also plays a big role in this poem. The use of enjambment and
punctuation reinforce the movement of time through the poem that is written in six
full phrases –those ended with full stop. We can see a lot of verses without
punctuation at the end making the reading faster from one verse to another. It is
also important to say that the verses where the punctuation is used are those where
the pass of time is slower, the beginning and the end.
Alliteration, on the other hand, is used to enhance the mood that Byron wishes to
communicate, as the use of sin: “Season less, herbless, treeless, man less, lifeless”
as a phonemic example of silence and growing death as we are approaching the
end of the poem as well as the end of times.
Byron is not using complex metaphors or ideas which delay the development of
the poem; we can see the men depicted as animals, irrational beasts driving
themselves to the abysm of darkness:
“The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a cores, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them or the dropping dead”
Even the nature is seen in the poem as something no natural, the vision of the sea
and the wind completely calm, without any movement, practically dead, as well as
the image of men howling desperately, birds shrieking terrified with “useless
wings”, “the wildest brutes” coming “tame and tremulous” and the vipers
“crawled / And twins’ themselves among the multitude, / Hissing, but stingless--
they were slain for food.”
Another feature used in the poem by Lord Byron is that of the imagery, showing to
the reader a description of the end of times almost like a movie occurring rapidly.
This images are powerful and terrifying, “from light, movement and life to
darkness, stillness and death”
)
as the time is ending. This step from one opposite to
another –as from life to death- we can also see it in the rhythm used in the poem
itself: from swiftness to slow and in the inversion of man from rational creature to
a beast.
We can see in the poem some key images, some about the destruction of the world
by fire or flames:
“Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's faced;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was the entire world contained;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash--and all was black.”
Other image is the already said image of men as animals at the end part of the
poem, as savage creatures. This fact is emphasized where Byron talks about the
dog “faithful to a corpse” Keeping the birds, beasts and even famished men far
from the body of his master. In other words, this dog is depicted as a creature
more civilised than men and men are shown as “savage, fighting heroically for
survival”.
There are features that can be seen as some kind of biblical language announcing
the apocalypse like that of the snakes and, at some verses, men are seen as devils:
“The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down”
With this vision of men as devils, Byron “is communicating that fear: that God is
not in nature or in us; that he is not at all; that ‘Darkness (or nature) had no need /
of aid from them--She was the Universe’
In conclusion with the analysis, it is a poem with a depressing and catastrophic
mood, full of imagery about the end of times, cities set on fire, humans as
beasts, and the transition from slow movement at the beginning, fast and chaotic
in the middle to once again slow at the end, from life to death, from light to
darkness.
This atmosphere of tragedy is influence by Byron’s own depression; his cynical
view of the humanity because “he allows man no dignity at all in his final hours”.
Reference
http://www.gradesaver.com/lord-byrons-poems/study-guide/summary-darkness
http://mural.uv.es/perova/byron.html
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/.../darkness-56d222aeeee1.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/darkness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_(poem)
web.colby.edu/.../darkness-by-lord-byron-a-historical-account-
https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/article/viewFile/246/332
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/.../lord-byrons-darkest-summer
signaturen-magazin.de/lord-byron--darkness.html
https://simonbarraclough.com/.../byrons-darkness-and-the-summer-o...
https://quizlet.com/.../lord-byron-darkness-review-flash-cards/
misterdfuniverso.com.br/an-analysis-of-the-poem-darkness-by-lord-..
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