This is one of Lord Byron’s most serious and emotional poems. Lord Byron is well known for his poems such as Don Juan – which is a comedic epic — but here the restraint and feelings of sorrow are all the more potent because of the lack of typical Byron rebelliousness.

Today, ‘When We Two Parted’ is one of his most loved poems.

Structure
The poem, supposedly, originally contained a fifth stanza, which named the recipient of the poem ‘Fanny’. — that is, ‘Lady Frances Webster’.

The definitive version, as printed here, comprises four stanzas of eight lines each. The line lengths alternate between six syllables and five syllables (irregular meter), to create a relentless, stressed rhythm, through which the sad subject matter and the grief of the poet are clearly conveyed.

The rhyme scheme is ABABCDCD, repeated in each stanza. Despite the regularity of the structure and the self-controlled grief, there is a sense that the poet could explode with anger.

The poem follows a cyclical structure; the end of the poem links to the beginning. This perhaps alludes to Byron’s ongoing misery– despite the fracture of his relationship not being recent, his grief doesn’t cease.

Language and Imagery
The language is simple, mostly monosyllabic. The voice is the first person, belonging to the poet, and addressing his lost love in the old form of the second person ‘thy’. The story is also simple and therefore effective. There are few similes or metaphors, apart from the ‘dew of the morning’ which suggests the sadness of an empty new day and ‘knell’ which suggests death. Those apart there is little in the way of poetic devices. But then nothing more is needed to add to the impact of this sad poem.

Context: The poem is generally believed to be about Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. Byron is believed to have written it when he heard she had taken the Duke of Wellington as her new lover (McCarthy, p. 327 and McGann, p. 191).
According to MacCarthy, the final censored stanza read:

‘Then fare thee well, Fanny,
Now doubly undone,
To prove false unto many
As faithless to one.
Thou are past all recalling
Even would I recall,
For the woman once falling
Forever must fall.’

Sources:

• MacCarthy, Fiona (2014), Byron: Life and Legend (London: John Murray, 2002).

• McGann, Jerome, ‘Byron and “The Truth in Masquerade”’, Romantic Revisions, ed. by Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 191-209.