To Woman
To Woman - meaning Summary
Female Devotion and Disillusion
Byron’s poem addresses a beloved figure and contrasts the speaker’s repeated capacity for rapture with a dawning skepticism. He acknowledges that experience should warn him of women’s fickleness, yet immediate attraction and hope erase caution. Memory and hope are praised as blessings, but when passion fades memory curses the lover. The poem ends resignedly, treating vows as transient and unreliable, likening them to marks that will not endure.
Read Complete AnalysesWoman! experience might have told me, That all must love thee who behold thee: Surely experience might have taught Thy firmest promises are nought: But, placed in all thy charms before me, All I forget, but to adore thee. Oh memory! Thou choicest blessing When join’d with hope, when still possessing; But how much cursed by every lover When hope is fled and passion’s over. Woman, that fair and fond deceiver, How throbs the pulse when first we view The eye that rolls in glossy blue, Or sparkles black, or mildly throws A beam from under hazel brows! How quick we credit every oath, And hear her plight the willing troth! Fondly we hope’t will last for aye, When, lo! she changes in a day. This record will for ever stand, ‘Woman, thy vows are traced in sand.’
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