My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As soon as I finished reading this, I gave it 4 stars. Having let it sit in my mind for a bit and now as I sit down to write this review, I’m going to change it to 5. The poetry itself (in four cantos) is very good and I’d rate Byron’s work a solid 4. However the notes in the edition I read were spectacular and pushed my rating up. The almost 100 pages of notes include history, social issues, and contemporary commentary. They are written in English, Latin, classical Greek and Italian, and cite present and classical authors in their native tongues. So very cool and even further accelerate my desire to learn Latin.

Byron wrote the first two cantos and published them. These are interesting and good, but I think he’s still feeling out where he’s going with it. By the third canto, I began to see the Byron of later works turn from seedling to blossom. He’s mastering speed, pacing and content and you can almost see him reflecting and growing as a poet. By the fourth canto, he is in his own, filling my heart and mind with each stanza.

Like in his Curse of Minerva, published the same year as the first two cantos of Childe Harold, Byron calls out those who have looted and stolen Greek treasures (such as the Elgin Marbles):

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed By British hands, which it had best behoved To guard those relics ne'er to be restored. Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, And once again thy hapless bosom gored, And snatch'd thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorr'd! Canto II: XV
As I’m starting to look into Horace’s works, it was fun to run across this oft cited stanza:
Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse To understand, not feel thy lyric flow, To comprehend, but never love thy verse, Although no deeper Moralist rehearse Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art, Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce, Awakening without wounding the touch'd heart, Yet fare thee well–upon Soracte's ridge we part. Canto IV: LXXVII
One thought I had continually as I read through Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was that Byron’s poetry (and most poetry) should be read aloud. The cadences that develop as you speak it add another depth to the work. It’s almost like listening to classical music. You can hear it on one level and appreciate it, but sometimes, there’s something else just underneath perception that swells or crushes your heart. I get this with Mozart and I get it with many selections from Byron (e.g. this poem, Mazeppa, and parts of Manfred). Byron was a fan of Coleridge’s Christabel and Kubla Khan, and I can see why as those poems also carry beautiful imagery and pacing within them.