"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, The part I've found of greatest consolation is this excerpt: (1) From the narrative poem, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' by Lord Byron. For the fresh year ahead, instead of planning every step, let’s embrace squeaking some floorboards and remember that “There is pleasure in the pathless woods”. If 2020 has made anything clear it’s that life plans sit on top of some shaky foundations. There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar. The world decides it’s time to have a sticky beak into your life plans and asks the question that launches a thousand ships of existential dread, “What are you going to do for the rest of your life?”. During this time, the world revels in your infinite potential, leaving you giddy with the possibilities, but then you hit a turning point. The years go by and you progress through school and into university. As babies, we have the easy job of being squishy, cute, and jumping some simple hurdles: walking, talking, and learning to not cover your little brother in baby oil and talcum powder for the giggles.
To this day, my bones still remember how to tread across the hallway floorboards without making a single squeak.Īfter growing out of imagining vampires, the fear of not having a plan settled in. My imagination had decided that vampires were lurking in the dark, and not the sparkling sort that would have boys and girls swooning come the twilight of the new millennium, but the classic demonic kind.įaced with these monsters, my six-year-old brain reasoned that the only way of surviving the round trip from my bedroom to the bathroom depended on my being pin drop silent. In the fourth canto the imaginary pilgrim is replaced by the poet himself, speaking in the first person about Venice, Ferrara, Florence, and Rome and the artists and heroes associated with those cities.As a child, hearing the call of nature during the middle of the night felt life threatening. On each segment of the journey, Byron evokes associated historical events and people, such as the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Napoleon before the Battle of Waterloo. In the third canto the pilgrim travels to Belgium, the Rhine Valley, the Alps, and the Jura. The first two cantos describe his travels through Portugal, Spain, the Ionian Islands, and Albania, ending with a lament on the occupation of Greece by the Ottoman Turks. Disillusioned with his aimless life devoted to pursuing pleasure, Childe Harold seeks distraction by going on a solitary pilgrimage to foreign lands. “Childe” is a title from medieval times, designating a young noble who is not yet knighted. Byron gained his first poetic fame with the publication of the first two cantos. Cantos I and II were published in 1812, Canto III in 1816, and Canto IV in 1818.