Themes of Depression in Byron and Shelley's Poetry Anonymous 12th Grade

Poets of the Romantic era placed great importance on individualism and indulging in your emotions, rejecting the Enlightenment era’s attempt to explain the world through logic. This is first seen in ‘Fare Thee Well’, where Lord Byron focuses on the separation from his wife, Annabella Milbanke, and the sense of depression that follows. Percy Shelley’s ‘The cold earth slept below’ follows a similar Romantic viewpoint, in which Shelley writes about his late wife Harriet, and the depression that he feels upon hearing about her death. With both Byron and Shelley being second generation romantics, they were more concerned with the feelings of the individual, and indulging in your emotions rather than moving on from them. It was this strong focus on emotions that particularly developed the Lyric form, which both Byron and Shelley utilize to express the individual feelings they experienced.

Within the poem, Byron is directly addressing his divorced wife and attempts to blame her for the depression he experienced. The poem begins with a seemingly contented start, ‘Fare thee well!’, which would initially indicate to the reader that the tone of the poem would be positive. However this is immediately undermined in the third line where...