The poem ‘Darkness’ by Lord George Gordon Byron (Darkness, 2000) is a dark and pessimistic view of the world, as seen from the poet’s eyes. The world and the cataclysmic events that lead to such a bleak outlook are the loss of sunlight, the giver of food, and life. He finally equates war and famine as the events that drove the sun away from the universe. The poem is a study of the dark and gothic style of prose that Byron sometimes practiced. According to the BBC analysis, the poem’s depressive and gloom-filled tone can be related to the depression that he suffered in his first summer in Switzerland after he left England for the last time. To the poet, his beloved England was the sun and it sustained him. So when he was forced to leave his motherland, it seemed as if the sun had done away (BBC, 2007).
The poet portrays a stark picture of apocalypse, famine, death, and starvation where skeletons fight in the bitter cold for survival as they dig among the ashes. The poem is filled with bitterness for man and his feeble attempts to control the universe when all of the achievements are swamped out when the sun goes away.
“The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars, id wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth, wrung blind and blackening in the moonless air;” (Darkness, 2000). In the opening sentences of the poem, Byron speaks of a dream he had but he again says that this is not a dream. He is obviously creating a scenario where the sun has disappeared and stars have gone away, leaving earth bitter and cold, without any warmth. The sunless earth has a very depressing effect on men and Byron speaks of the dread and desolation that men faced “And men forgot their passions in the dread”. Byron speaks of how all men started praying for sunlight to come back. So great was the desperation and need for light that “the palace of crowned kings, the huts…were burnt for beacons”.
The abrupt darkness has had a very telling effect on the breakdown of cities and the social orders of the day as men of all classes joined to keep a vigil for sunlight. Byron in line 16, shows that men who once were ashamed to speak to each other were forced “To look once more into each other’s face.” “Darkness” was the plague to all creatures of the earth. Men and animals alike began to lose loyalty and the ability to feel emotions and “the earth was only one thought”- the thought of death. Byron speaks of people who lived near volcanoes as the privileged class since the volcanoes acted as a mountain torch and gave light in the otherwise dark world while the rest of the world only had a “fearful hope”.
Byron speaks in fleeting glimpses of the manner in which the forests of the world were burnt down. He speaks of “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”. According to Byron, forests were the repository of hope and life and when the trees were burnt down, they left a great black void in the world that nothing could light up.
There was general upheaval among men since there was no sunlight; life had no meaning or purpose. “..some lay down and hid their eyes and wept and some did rest, their chins upon their clenched hands..” The reaction of men when faced with differs and while some gave up hope and lay down to die, the others walked about to and fro, stocking their funeral pyre with fuel. The funeral pyre is symbolic, as it needs wood to keep the pyre lighted, wood that provided light was being used to light the pyre, which again was the final destination for men.
So great was the depression that it even tamed vipers and wild brutes and Byron speaks of “.. the wildest brutes came tame and tremulous and vipers crawled and twined themselves among the multitude, hissing but sting-less, they were slain for food”. A bitter element of irony has been introduced in these lines as Byron suggests that even wild animals, who are traditional enemies of men became tame and sought humanity for comfort. But so great was famine and hunger and so desperate man had become, that he slew the animals and ate them up.
Among all the narration of events, Byron has brought up the event of the faithful dog. While other dogs turned on their masters and were quickly slain and devoured, one dog stood true to its master. “even dogs assailed their masters, all save one and he was faithful to a corscourse kept”. This piece asserts that even in this desperate world where all love and reason was lost, it was the humble and faithful dog that alone retained its sanity. Byron enigmatically speaks of the last moments of the dog when it dies near its master.
The poem moves from death and desolation when it pits two enemies against each other who are the last survivors of this apocalypse. The horror of the situation has gripped the two past enemies, but in this time of desperation, they patch up to search for the “dying embers” of hope…light. Seeing past their differences, they worked together, to no avail, to ignite a flame of hope, but as the flame of light faded, so did their teamwork. In darkness “the world was void”- void of thought and the will to survive, left with sorrow and eternal darkness. The disappearance of the sun has brought the whole universe to a standstill and even the oceans and seas lay still “The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirred within their silent depths”.
With total stillness and death, the ships, a symbol of power in the maritime economy also stood rotting, their masts were broken down and the whole earth was stilled. To Byron, the fate of ships is of great significance and he has specially mentioned them. In the Europe of the era in which Byron lived, it was shipped that represented the lifeline of a country, and the symbolic interpretation when Byron speaks of a rotting hunk and broken masts, cannot be missed. The poem ends with the stark portrayal of the end of the universe when darkness was the universe and all life was stilled.
Byron has successfully portrayed what happens to life if the sun disappears forever and there is darkness all around. The stark imagery and the pointed use of metaphors and symbols to depict the end of life are very poignant.
References
BBC. 2007. Lord Byron – Darkness, published 1816. Web.
Darkness. 2000. Darkness by Lord George Gordon Byron: Literature Network. Web.