My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Byron’s The Siege of Corinth and Parisina were published in 1816. They show his developing style that is fast, fluid and full of information. It’s like he’s writing prose in verse form. Both poems read so fast and grab your attention from the first word and hang on to you until the last breath.

The Siege of Corinth tells the story of a man who left Corinth, converted from Christianity to Islam and then helped the Turks siege and destroy that city. There are bits of ghost story, nervousness before battle, fighting, religion, morality and how mothers grieve for their children. It includes thoughts on hearing the Muslim call to prayer (lines 221-228), something I felt and wrote similarly about when I was in Morocco (lines 221-228):

As rose the Muezzin's voice in air In midnight call to wonted prayer; It rose, that chaunted mournful strain, Like some lone spirit's o'er the plan: 'Twas musical, but sadly sweet, Such as when winds and harp-strings meet, And take a long unmeasured tone, To mortal minstrelsy unknown.
Also, Stanza XVIII (lines 450-461) really reminded me of Percy Shelley’s poem Ozymandias in its discussing a temple ruin. Shelley’s poem was written during the Christmas season of 1817-1818, over a year after The Siege of Corinth came out. While it has a different focus, I wonder if Shelley had Byron’s piece, which he most certainly would have read, in the back of his mind:
There is a temple in ruin stands, Fashion'd by long forgotten hands; Two or three columns, and many a stone, Marble and granite, with grass o'ergrown ! Out upon Time ! it will leave no more Of the things to come than the things before ! Out upon Time ! who for ever will leave But enough of the past for the future to grieve O'er that which hath been, and o'er that which must be: What we have seen, our sons shall see; Remnants of things that have pass'd away, Fragments of stone rear'd by creatures of clay !
Parisina, like the Siege of Corinth, is based on true events, though some license has been taken. Like the other poem, it flows rapidly and in just 585 lines, it tells a gripping and story around three central characters (a marquis, his wife and his son by a different woman).

Well worth the time to engage with these two poems.