When We Two Parted
(by Lord George Gordon Byron) WHEN WE TWO PARTED
Parted’’ is a short lyric poem written in the mid-
dle phase of Byron’s poetic career. Like many of
his poems, it contains biographical references,
which the poet attempts to conceal. A key figure
in the Romantic movement (an eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century philosophical, literary, and
artistic movement with a variety of interpreta-
tions generally focusing on the love of nature,
and the importance of individualism, independ-
ence, and imagination), Byron is often lauded
more for his political satire and his longer narra-
tive poems and plays than for poems such as
‘‘When We Two Parted.’’ Indeed, his short lyric
verses are often either critically ignored or only
briefly acknowledged as simplistic and intensely
autobiographical. Originally published in 1816
inPoems, 1816by John Murray (the reprinted
volume is available through Woodstock Books,
1990), the poem is falsely attributed by Byron as
having been written in 1808. Byron’s later corre-
spondence indicates that he made this false attri-
bution in order to protect the name and
reputation of the poem’s subject, Lady Frances
Wedderburn Webster. The poem is available in
The Poetical Works of Byron, edited by Robert
F. Gleckner, published in 1975, and more
recently, in Lord Byron: The Major Works,
edited by Jerome J. McGann, and published in
2000.
‘‘When We Two Parted’’ recounts the narra-
tor’s feelings of grief, betrayal, and regret
295LORD GEORGE GORDON
BYRON1816