Appreciation of when we two parted
Abstract:
“When we two parted” is a poem of George Gordon Byron written in 1808 and published in 1813 in “The poetical works of Lord Byron” This poem is about the love, first, and later the hate a man feels towards who was his beloved because she left him. It’s a very typical Romantic poem, typical of a Romantic writer like Lord Byron, who expresses his feelings of love, a typical issue of Romanticism. This thesis mainly focuses on giving an introduction of the author Byron and analyzing the poem in every aspect.
Keywords: structure; rhetorical figures; emotion
I. Introduction of the Author
  Byron was a romantic poet, his writings develops a Romantic style as distinctive and as influential as Wordsworth’s works, one of the most representative romantic writers. Byron’s romantic subjectivity defines itself in spectacular terms, this subjectivity has been criticized as
too theatrical by John Keats. But for other poets like Baudelaire, that theatrical style defined Byron’s greatness as a lyric poet. 英语专业论文题目
  Lord Byron has a wonderful collection of poetic works, he started writing in 1806 to his death in 1824. Through this years he made a lot of famous works such as “Child Harold’s Pilgrimage”, “Don Juan” or “Manfred”. The main characteristic of Byron’s poems is its strength and masculinity, combined in a lot of cases with irony. “When we two parted” is a poem of heart broken, expressing strong feelings in a simple but full of meaning vocabulary.
II. Appreciation of the Poem
A. Structure
  The poem is divided in four stanzas and each one in eight verses. The rhyme used by Byron follows this structure: abab cdcd efef ghgh ijij klkl mnmn  kbkb. Separating each stanza in four verses, Readers can have the rhyme more clear, each even verse and each
odd verse rhyme with its equivalent even or odd verse. This structure gives to the poem a lot of rhyme, giving the sensation of musicality.
  The vocabulary is easy to understand for everybody who studies the English language. The first verse of the poem is also the title of the poem, which means that the writer could not or did not want to find a title for the poem. Maybe the damage he felt was so strong that he was not able to find a good title for the poem, as he writes at the end of the third stanza (Long, long shall I rue thee/ Too deeply to tell).
B. Rhetorical Figures
  In this poem it is too difficult to find rhetorical figures, due to the most important of all the poem is the strength of the words. Despite of this, it can be seen, for example, in the third line a metaphor: “half broken-hearted”; the poet is expressing us how he and his lover feel when they are two parted.
Another striking thing found in the poem is the second part of the fourth stanza. It is the onl
y stanza which repeats the rhyme of other verses and not just the rhyme, but the word itself. E.g. “To sever for years” and “After long years”. If we pay attention, there is also a correspondence of meaning, in the first stanza Byron is telling they are going to sever for years and in the last stanza he is thinking of what he will do when they meet again. With the other two verses is the same, at the first part: “In silence and tears” is how they react when they are two parted, and in the last part of the poem: “With silence and tears” is how he is going to have to greet her since they did not meet.
In the last stanza, the two first verses have two words that may be synonyms, but they mean a totally different thing, they are the contrast of the poem: In secret we met, here Byron wants to transmit the passion of two lovers in their first secret encounter. And In silence I grieve symbolizes that nobody can help this man to come back to smile after having been left by the woman he loved.
C. Analyzing the Poem in Detail
  In the first stanza, the poet begins with the main topic, remembering the separation of the
two lovers, how they felt: “half broken-hearted”, showing his pain. Also he expresses the idea of what we think that this separation is due to the death of his lover with the metaphor of : “Pale grew thy cheek and cold,/colder thy kiss”. All that surrounds her is cold, and this cold is a perfect form to express the death in contrast with the warm involving the life.
Following with the poem, in the second stanza it can be found the relation of colder morning with the pain that the poet is feeling. Also another time we can see that his lover is dead: “thy vows are all broken”. Then, it followed with the shame that feels the poet when he hears her name; maybe shame because their relation was a sin. This idea will be developed later with some comments of people that “she” was a married woman.
The third stanza contains strong vocabulary showing again that “she” is dead: “A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o’er me”. These two verses remain to the sounds of the bells of a funeral, using the appropriated word “Knell”. Also he asked himself why he loved her so, and people who knew her well do not know any relation between them. Maybe that people who knew her well could be her family and husband.