By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Lord Byron (1788-1824) sent his poem ‘So, we’ll go no more a roving’ to his friend Thomas Moore in a letter of 1817. Byron prefaced the poem with a few words: ‘At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival – that is, the latter part of it, and sitting up late o’ nights – had knocked me up a little. But it is over – and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and sacred music… Though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find “the sword wearing out the scabbard,” though I have but just turned the corner of twenty nine.’ ‘So, we’ll go no more a roving’ is about world-weariness and disillusionment: a quintessential theme of Byron’s poetry.
So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.