Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
By Lord Byron
Cover: Lord Byron in Albanian Dress (1813, replica c. 1835), oil on canvas by Thomas Phillips (1770-1845) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1845)
Byron's Childe Harold, a world-weary young man, travels through Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy and the Alps, and the narrator's meditations on ruins, battles and liberty become the poem. The first two cantos made Byron famous overnight in 1812, and the last two were written in exile.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.