Research Paper on:
Lord Byron's Poems and the Metaphors of Love and Fame

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
In his Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa, for example, the poet introduces images of flower, plants, love and age and produces a view of a  man, grown older, with great despair over his situation. In another poem, On This Day, Byron uses symbolic representations of the same elements, but does so in a manner  that represents a view of youth cheerfully wasted, that is regrettable, but not lamented. Both of these poems help to understand the concepts of love and fame as they  can be understood in the context of the life of a poet. Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa, begins with an introduction to the poet, and  the notion of fame. The poet argues first that it is common for individuals to be remembered posthumously and that fame itself has little value when weighed against the  life of youth. Though it may be tempting to desire a life that is remembered through history, the life lived in youth is experientially of greater importance in its  immediacy. Byron writes: "the days of our youth are the days of our glory..." (ln. 2). When an individual ages, though they may experience fame, it is  more likely that they will remember and personally value the days of their youth. Byron takes a strong stand in representing this belief, and uses metaphors for spring, youth and  age in his argument. Byron describes the aged as those with "brow that is wrinkled" (ln. 5) and states that the laurels experienced in age are much like the  dew in the Spring sprinkled on a "dead-flower" (ln. 6). The uselessness of this kind of fame on the aged, then, becomes a point of despair for the poet.