Byron was the man!

I have always liked Edgar Allan Poe and his Gothic literature, and had never paid much attention to another Gothic writer of the same time: Lord Byron. The guy fought in the Greek War of Independence, lay with men and women, including his half-sister, was one of the earliest writers to describe the effects of the weed and crossed the Hellespont (now the Dardanelles Strait) swimming, a feat that until today is celebrated at events where several swimmers make the crossing, reliving one of Byron's greatest achievements.

The distance at the narrowest point on the Hellespont to the other shore is almost a mile and there is a steady stream from the Marmara Sea to the Archipelago. This feat was first performed by Leandro, a young man from Abydos, a town on the Asian bank of the Strait.

On the opposite bank of the strait, in the town of Sestos, lived the maiden Hero, priestess of Venus. Leandro loved her and used to cross the strait, swimming every night, to enjoy the company of the beloved, guided by a torch that herself lighted in the tower for that purpose.

But on a stormy night, when the sea was very agitated, the young man lost his strength and drowned. The waves took her body to the European shore, where Hero took notice of his death and, desperately, threw herself from the tower to the sea, where she perished. Lord Byron wanted to prove the possibility of this crossing himself, when many considered it still legendary and impossible.

Byron died in 1824 from a fever contracted on the battlefields when he fought in the War for the Independence of Greece and until nowadays is considered a war hero by those.

Lord Byron

Lord Byron (1788–1824). Poetry of Byron. 1881.

II. Descriptive and Narrative

Hellespont

(The Bride of Abydos, Canto ii.)

THE WINDS are high on Helle’s wave,

As on that night, of stormy water

When Love, who sent, forgot to save

The young, the beautiful, the brave,

The lonely hope of Sestos’ daughter.

Oh! when alone along the sky

Her turret-torch was blazing high,

Though rising gale, and breaking foam,

And Shrieking sea-birds warn’d him home;

And clouds aloft and tides below,

With signs and sounds, forbade to go,

He could not see, he would not hear,

Or sound or sign foreboding fear;

His eye but saw that light of love,

The only star it hail’d above;

His ear but rang with Hero’s song,

“Ye waves, divide not lovers long!”—

That tale is old, but love anew

May nerve young hearts to prove as true.

The winds are high, and Helle’s tide

Rolls darkly heaving to the main;

And Night’s descending shadows hide

That field with blood bedew’d in vain

The desert of old Priam’s pride;

The tombs, sole relics of his region

All—save immortal dreams that could beguile

The blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle!