So, we'll go no more a roving
So we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.[1]
"So, we'll go no more a roving" is a poem, written by (George Gordon) Lord Byron (1788–1824), and included in a letter to Thomas Moore on 28 February 1817. Moore published the poem in 1830 as part of Letters and Journals of Lord Byron.
It evocatively describes how the youth at that time wanted to do something different. Byron wrote the poem at the age of twenty-nine. In the letter to Thomas Moore, the poem is preceded by an account of its genesis:
- At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival—that is, the latter part of it, and sitting up late o' nights—had knocked me up a little. But it is over—and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and sacred music... Though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find 'the sword wearing out the scabbard,' though I have just turned the corner of twenty-nine.
The poem may have been suggested in part by the refrain of a Scottish song known as "The Jolly Beggar". "The Jolly Beggar" was published in Herd's Scottish Songs in 1776, decades before Byron's letter, with this refrain:
And we'll gang nae mair a roving
Sae late into the night,
And we'll gang nae mair a roving, boys,
Let the moon shine ne'er sae bright.
And we'll gang nae mair a roving.[2]
The poem appears as "Go No More A-Roving" on the 2004 Leonard Cohen album Dear Heather. It was also recorded by Joan Baez on her 1964 Joan Baez/5 album, and by Mike Westbrook on his 1998 album The Orchestra of Smith's Academy. Richard Dyer-Bennet recorded his own setting, with slightly altered text, on the 1955 album Richard Dyer-Bennet 1. The poem also appears on the Marianne Faithfull and Warren Ellis album She Walks in Beauty. The poem is also a centerpiece of "—And the Moon be Still as Bright" from Ray Bradbury's fix-up The Martian Chronicles. A reading of the Poem is performed partially as the first verse, and completely as the final verse, in the cover of AC/DC's "For those about to Rock" by TISM.
The poem serves as a basis for the chorus of the song "The Jolly Beggar" as recorded by the traditional Irish band Planxty, as well as the basis for the love leitmotif in Patrick Doyle's score for the film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where it is fully realized in the track "The Wedding Night". The poem is referenced in the epilogue of the novel Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin. The poem is also featured in John Wyndham's post-apocalyptic novel The Day of the Triffids, where it occurs when a blinded pianist commits suicide.
The first line is a sub-theme to the "Dark Autumn" episode of Midsomer Murders.
See also
References
- ^ Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1905). The Complete Poetical Works (Cambridge ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 229–230.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Herd, David, ed. (1776). The Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. Vol. 2. Edinburgh: James Dickson and Charles Elliot. pp. 26–28.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/38px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png)
- Annotated poem at the University of Toronto library
- v
- t
- e
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/George_Gordon_Byron%2C_6th_Baron_Byron_by_Richard_Westall_%282%29.jpg/80px-George_Gordon_Byron%2C_6th_Baron_Byron_by_Richard_Westall_%282%29.jpg)
- Anne Isabella, Lady Byron (wife)
- Ada Lovelace (daughter)
- Allegra Byron (daughter)
- John "Mad Jack" Byron (father)
- Claire Clairmont
- Nicolo Giraud
- Contessa Guiccioli
- Jane Harley
- John Cam Hobhouse
- Douglas Kinnaird
- Lady Caroline Lamb
- Augusta Leigh (maternal half-sister)
- Medora Leigh
- Thomas Moore
- Isaac Nathan
- Walter Scott
- John William Polidori
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Mary Shelley
- Edward John Trelawny
- Michael C. Burgess
poetry
- Hours of Idleness (1807)
- English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818)
- The Giaour (1813)
- The Bride of Abydos (1813)
- The Corsair (1814)
- Lara, A Tale (1814)
- The Siege of Corinth (1816)
- Parisina (1816)
- The Prisoner of Chillon (1816)
- The Dream (1816)
- Prometheus (1816)
- "Darkness" (1816)
- The Lament of Tasso (1817)
- Beppo (1818)
- Don Juan (1819–1824; incomplete upon Byron's 1824 death)
- Mazeppa (1819)
- The Prophecy of Dante (1819)
- The Vision of Judgment (1821)
- The Age of Bronze (1823)
- The Island (1823)
- Manfred (1817)
- Marino Faliero (1820)
- Sardanapalus (1821)
- The Two Foscari (1821)
- Cain (1821)
- Heaven and Earth (1821)
- Werner (1822)
- The Deformed Transformed (1822)
poetry
- "Lachin y Gair" (1807)
- "Epitaph to a Dog" (1808)
- "Maid of Athens, ere we part" (1810)
- Hebrew Melodies (1815)
- "Fare Thee Well" (1816)
- Irish Avatar (1821)
- "So, we'll go no more a roving" (1830)
- Fragment of a Novel (1819)
- Letters
- Memoirs
- Byron (1908 play)
- The Bride of Frankenstein (1935 film)
- The Bad Lord Byron (1949 film)
- Camino Real (1953 play)
- Lord Byron (1972 opera)
- Lady Caroline Lamb (1972 film)
- Childe Byron (1977 play)
- Bloody Poetry (1984 play)
- Gothic (1986 film)
- Rowing with the Wind (1988 film)
- Haunted Summer (1988 film)
- Arcadia (1993 play)
- Mary Shelley (2017 film)
- "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" (2020 TV episode)
Category