Byron's  Broad Street Boyhood

                               

 No trace of Byron’s boyhood home,

Yet these surrounds he would have known;

Here in Broad Street Aberdeen, 

Because his father libertine –

 

Had made his heiress mother’s cash

Disappear in a flash!

But as her kin for her retained

A portion, they the journey made

 

To Aberdeen, as a retreat,

First in Queen’s then in Broad Street,

Living there in straitened times,

Despite her noble Gordon line.

 

And then his Dad to see her came –

But really just to money claim;

Their quarrels leaving him bereft,

And then his Dad forever left.

 

The Greyfriars church he would have seen,

In Back Wynd’s passageway have been;

And here he teased his Mum and guests

By throwing out a pillow dressed

 

In his own clothes from window high

While uttering a piercing cry!

What a shock they must have had!

What relief to see the lad!

 

‘Dinna speak of it!’ he’d cried

With little whip he then let fly

At tactless nurse who had exclaimed:

‘So sad this pretty boy is lame’.

 

And then a mile across the town

He found his way, with schoolboy frown,

To the school where he began

That learning which the classics spanned.

 

He’d read of the exotic East,

On tales Arabian he’d feast;

The Old Testament preferred to New,

But poems all he would eschew.

 

A helper young by name May Gray

Would ‘tricks upon his person’ play,

And yet a pious girl was she,

A first taste of hypocrisy.

 

In fact in later life he’d say

This early knowledge spoiled his way,

With those pleasures known too young

His chances of true love undone.

 

Then one day when he was ten

His childhood would mutate again:

To headmaster’s study he was called

And told ‘Son, now you are a Lord!’

 

And given cake and claret fine –

His status by that gift defined;

Though he would find the tears sprang

At assembly, when his title rang

 

Round the room, all turned to see

The new Lord Byron – there revealed!

And so to new life he was called

Beyond that academic hall.

 

But took with him the memories

Of Scotland’s beauty, wild, serene;

Recalled from Pisa's study room,

Where his remembrances would bloom

 

In that palazzo there immersed,

Recalling Scotland’s soul in verse.

A late recall before he’d part,

The call of  Greece a burning spark,

 

That would grow into a flame,

That burned all his old life away:

From women, poet’s fame enticed

For Missolonghi’s sacrifice.

 

O ye in Broad Street Aberdeen,

Think of him who here has been!

 

 

'Half a Scot by birth'

(Byron verses remembering Scotland in song)

 

 

The complete rundown!

Byron’s Poems about Scotland
edited by Peter Cochran