Literary analysis of I saw thee weep by Lord Byron

I Saw Thee Weep (1815)

I saw thee weep—the big bright tear

Came o’er that eye of blue;

And then methought it did appear

A violet dropping dew:

I saw thee smile—the sapphire’s blaze

Beside thee ceased to shine;

It could not match the living rays

That filled that glance of thine.

As clouds from yonder sun receive

A deep and mellow dye,

Which scarce the shade of coming eve

Can banish from the sky,

Those smiles unto the moodiest mind

Their own pure joy impart;

Their sunshine leaves a glow behind

That lightens o’er the heart.

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Narrative elements

SETTING: Romanticism, (18^th century) in a cemetery. 

THEME: Why is it too hard to forget somebody after death?

PLOT: A man describing how much he loves his deceased lover.

CHARACTERS: The narrator and his lover 

POINT OF VIEW: The atmosphere evokes sadness, someone who lost his lover and he cannot forget anything about her.  

FIGURES: Simile and rhyme

I Saw Thee Weep (1815)

Lord Byron was a romantic during the 18^th century, and “I saw thee weep” shows how much somebody to another person even after his or her death, how somebody can remember the exact details about what he lived with this person “I saw thee weep—the big bright tear Came o’er that eye of blue;” this character describes too much what his lover used to do. He continues thinking about those details even his lover is gone, the last verse evokes this “Their sunshine leaves a glow behind That lightens o’er the heart.” His lover was really special and apparently a good person that until the last day of her life she was smiling, evoking all kind of beautiful feelings that made happy and at the same time sad to her lover.

This is a romantic poem in which Byron decides to use rhyme so that it can sound more special for readers, he put the same sounds for the first and third verse, and the same for the second and fourth verse, it is possible to find the rhyme in the last verse of each word. On the other hand, he used similes like for example: “As clouds from yonder sun receive A deep and mellow dye,” this simile in order to highlight the beauty of his lover’s smile comparing it with the clouds and the sun, a smile very difficult to explain. When talking about characterization, the narrator shows to be a depressed person without his lover, he really misses too much, and when writing about her, he evokes sadness, on the other hand, the woman looks to be a wonderful woman that being alive she gave the best moments to her man, making him really happy but due to this also, making him really sad with his death. The poem was written in the 18^thcentury during the Romanticism era, it preserves the essence of this time; the man, maybe is in a cemetery, in front of his lover’s grave, telling her all the good moments they spent together, remembering her nostalgically.

Coming back with the main idea of the poem, Byron pretends to show how so many times good moments ironically make us feel really sad when that special person is gone, while this man remembered all these moments, his world was falling down inside him, seeing his lover in a grave, she, that in a moment was the reason of all his happiness, become suddenly in the reason of his sadness. Even after death, too many times we continue loving that person by thinking about the special moments, and this depending on the person may be a reason to continue or to end with his/her life.

I agree with what this poems presents, when we lose someone, good moments arrive to our head and this makes us feel really bad, we continue loving this person without knowing until what moment, sadness is the only we feel now, and we consider that we are not able to live any longer. This poem is a reflection to live all we can with our beloved people because in any moment we can be without them.