Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 3

Both sections provide examples of the Byronic character and hero described in my and the Editors' introductions. What aspects of this do you see, and where (QUOTE)?

The Byronic hero isn't too hard to pinpoint. The narrator starts off by speaking of his daughter Ada, reflecting on her in a way that seems longing to see or know her. "Is the face like thy mother's, my fair child!//Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?" I'd call this tortured or pained, though not from some unknown and mysterious event. He travels because he is feels that he must, even through the storm, "Still must I on; for I am as a weed,//Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail//Where're the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail." He is driven to sail, which I think works well with the antisocial and isolation portions of the hero because he makes no mention of shipmates. He portrays the scene as though it is only him and the sea, which though he is led by it, he speaks of it as though it is still somewhat tamed by himself, "And the waves bound beneath me as a steed//That knows his rider. Welcome, to their roar!"

The Narrator goes on to describe a "He" in the fifth stanza that is not identified but it is to be assumed to be either the Narrator or Childe Harold. I'm leaning toward this being Harold, but I'm not dedicated to that. "He, who grown aged in this world of woe,//in deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life;//So that no wonder waits him" sounds like a man who is likely now to be much jaded by life. "...he can tell//Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife//With airy images, and shapes which dwell//Still unimpair'd though old, in the soul's haunted cell." Which ever "He' this stanza refers to is wallowing is his past an no, he is not recalling it fondly as he is haunted by it which he remembers all too clearly for as old as the events or persons might be.

Back to the Narrator, we know he often dwells on matters, possibly the character his storytelling "Too long and darkly, till my brain became,//In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought" and comments that though he has changed, he is "still enough the same//In strength to bear what time can not abate,//And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate." which to me means something akin to "grin and bear it" only without the grinning. Our narrator has lived a harsh life in his youth "untaught in youth my heart to tame,//My springs of life were poison'd" and now he holds the pain within, changed by it but not enough to not be able to bear the load. That's Byronic as it gets to me.

Harold himself is also quite Byronic as when Stanza sets us up for his re-introduction, he is a man wounded by love or hurt "He of the breast which fains no more would feel,//Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal"

Jumping forward into the later stanzas, we again see the Narrator. "I have not loved the world, nor the world me;//I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd//To its idolatries a patient knee" This man does not expect the world to be kind to him at this point, and so is not kind to it in return. He does not take too the frivolous fancies of the classes as he might be expected to in this period. Again, we see the isolation and the anti-social behavior, "I stood//Among them, but not of them".

He also revisits the longing for the daughter here, speaking to her in saying, "I see thee not,-I hear thee not,-but none//Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art friend//To whom the shadows of far years extend" and though he had no intention of meeting her again, he hopes that his "voice" in the form of writings I'd suggest, will "reach into [her] heart" He also knows she will know little of him by way of her mother, but hopes that he can have the child's love still. Again, the longing is evident, "Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,//As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to me!" After he lists of what wrongs he feels would be between them and what things he hopes for the child, including a more mild tempter than his hot one, "but they fire//Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher," But these hopes are surely doomed and are all very much in vain.