MANFRED Essay Thesis Example For Students

MANFRED Essay Thesis A monologue from the play by Lord Byron NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Lord Byron: Six Plays. Lord Byron. Los Angeles: Black Box Press, 2007. MANFRED: From my youth upwardsMy Spirit walked not with the souls of men,Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;The thirst of their ambition was not mine,The aim of their existence was not mine;My joys—my griefs—my passions—and my powers,Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,I had no sympathy with breathing flesh,Nor midst the Creatures of Clay that girded meWas there but One who—but of her anon.I said with men, and with the thoughts of men,I held but slight communion; but instead,My joy was in the wilderness—to breatheThe difficult air of the iced mountains top,Where the birds dare not build—nor insects wingFlit oer the herbless granite; or to plungeInto the torrent, and to roll alongOn the swift whirl of the new-breaking waveOf river-stream, or Ocean, in their flow.In these my early strength exulted; orTo follow through the night the moving moon,The stars and their development; or catchThe dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim;O r to look, listning, on the scattered leaves,While Autumn winds were at their evening song.These were my pastimes, and to be alone;For if the beings, of whom I was one—Hating to be so—crossed me in my path,I felt myself degraded back to them,And was all clay again. And then I dived,In my lone wanderings, to the caves of Death,Searching its cause in its effect; and drewFrom withered bones, and skulls, and heaped up dustConclusions most forbidden. Then I passed—The nights of years in sciences untaught,Save in the old-time; and with time and toil,And terrible ordeal, and such penanceAs in itself hath power upon the air,And spirits that do compass air and earth,Space, and the peopled Infinite, I madeMine eyes familiar with Eternity,Such as, before me, did the Magi, andHe who from out their fountain-dwellings raisedEros and Anteros, at Gadara,As I do thee;—and with my knowledge grewThe thirst of knowledge, and the power and joyOf this most bright intelligence, until——Oh! I but thus prolonged my words,Boasting these idle attributes, becauseAs I approach the core of my hearts grief—But—to my task. I have not named to theeFather or mother, mistress, friend, or being,With whom I wore the chain of human ties;If I had such, they seemed not such to me—Yet there was One——She was like me in lineaments—her eyes—Her hair—her features—all, to the very toneEven of her voice, they said were like to mine;But softened all, and tempered into beauty:She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mindTo comprehend the Universe: nor theseAlone, but with them gentler powers than mine,Pity, and smiles, and tears—which I had not;And tenderness—but that I had for her;Humility—and that I never had.Her faults were mine—her virtues were her own—I loved her, and destroyed her!Not with my hand, but heart, which broke her heart;It gazed on mine, and withered. I have shedBlood, but not hers—and yet her blood was shed;I saw—and could not stanch it.