3 'Is lone as some volcanic isle [...] a funeral pile'

- Flavours of fire - passion, as old as the metaphor itself - Metaphorical decay of love and himself - touches on deep rooted images - roots of human experience - Terrifying force of nature - he lived through Year without Summer 1816 volcanic eruption in Indonesia 'l' - lethargic, fatiguing, close images with love and death

2 'The exalted portion of the pain and power of love'

- Reflects on the love he's shared, 'p' alliteration - powerful - Human made imprisonment, not natural phenomenon can be broken

3 'Glory and Greece, around me see!'

- Synedoche for war, warlike imagery - Finding redemption from decay - The war he will fight is deeply connected to history, mythology and philisophy - ancient greek philosophy build the foundations for European ideals and liberty from the Ottoman Empire

3 'Unworthy manhood!'

- Speaker is willing to give his life for greater good, he is still complex, no untouchable hero, still a vulnerable hero - Has to hold back painful feelings - Comic poet and satirist - major heartbreaker - felt washed up?

3 'The land of the honourable death is here!'

- He has caused as much pain as he has suffered - Dramatic caesura - Takes a minute to prepare, takes a breath, commands himself

2 'A soldier's grave [...] and choose thy ground'

- Humble, peaceful imagery - Mellow internal rhyme - place of resignation - whilst he hopes for an immortal name and glory, he undertsands such trophies require an acceptance of the normall ground to which every dead body must return

- As the poem’s speaker reaches middle age and turns away from love, he seeks out a new ideal: a glorious death on the battlefield. Comparing himself to an ancient Greek soldier, the speaker imagines giving up his life for a revolutionary cause—and thus entering a grand tradition of heroic warriors. The speaker’s choice to embrace self-sacrifice and death is noble, but not completely humble. In seeking such a death, he’s also seeking an immortal legacy as a legendary hero. Death, here, becomes not merely the tragic and inevitable end of life, but an opportunity to become an undying part of history. - In the second half of the poem, the speaker turns away from love to embrace death on the battlefield for a revolutionary cause. Not coincidentally, the speaker leaves behind the pleasures of love and moves towards death right at the midpoint of the poem, mirroring his sense that requited love must end at middle age. - This second part of his life will instead be devoted to “Glory,” in the form of a self-sacrificing death on the battlefield. This kind of death will make him like a Spartan hero, he thinks: he’ll become part of an illustrious ancient Greek tradition. The speaker’s embrace of a glorious death thus offers him a new kind of freedom. In sacrificing his life for a greater good, he becomes part of something bigger than himself. - The speaker’s association with legendary heroes suggests that part of maturity is seeing oneself as a small piece of a broader history, giving up the small individual pleasures of love in favor of the wider good of a nation or an ideal. Yet while the speaker ends his poem on a quiet note, seeking out “rest” in a common “soldier’s grave,” his renunciation of his own pleasures isn’t itself completely humble. His self-sacrificing embrace of death gives him a new energy and a new beauty, making him part of Greece’s grand tradition. In accepting the facts of aging, change, and death, and reaching out to a cause greater than his own personal pleasure, he hopes to gain an immortal legacy, redeeming himself from the indignity of decay.

On this day I complete my thirty-six year Flashcards by Sofia Gillani

‘Since others it hath ceased to move: […] still let me love!’

Cannot get people to love him back, but not giving up - renouncing love for his work
New epoch of life
Alll end rhymes slant - not perfect, ready to embrace

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‘My days are in the yellow leaf […] the worm, the cankers, and the grief are mine alone’

Symbolising autumn - traditional symbol for agining and mortality
Emphatic conclusion, reflective air

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‘Is lone as some volcanic isle […] a funeral pile’

Flavours of fire - passion, as old as the metaphor itself - Metaphorical decay of love and himself - touches on deep rooted images - roots of human experience
Terrifying force of nature - he lived through Year without Summer 1816 volcanic eruption in Indonesia

‘l’ - lethargic, fatiguing, close images with love and death

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‘The exalted portion of the pain and power of love’

Reflects on the love he’s shared, ‘p’ alliteration - powerful
Human made imprisonment, not natural phenomenon can be broken

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‘Where glory decks the hero’s bier, or binds his brow’

A new ideal of heroism, glory, no time to mope - personified character - Byronic hero, his battle is more than life or death but immortal
Percussive - demanding attention
Evoking ancient wreath
Having spent 4 stanzas talking about going backwards, he reaches the midpoint of the poem and changes - mirrors his life

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‘Glory and Greece, around me see!’

Synedoche for war, warlike imagery
Finding redemption from decay
The war he will fight is deeply connected to history, mythology and philisophy - ancient greek philosophy build the foundations for European ideals and liberty from the Ottoman Empire

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‘Unworthy manhood!’

Speaker is willing to give his life for greater good, he is still complex, no untouchable hero, still a vulnerable hero
Has to hold back painful feelings
Comic poet and satirist - major heartbreaker - felt washed up?

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‘The land of the honourable death is here!’

He has caused as much pain as he has suffered
Dramatic caesura
Takes a minute to prepare, takes a breath, commands himself

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‘A soldier’s grave […] and choose thy ground’

Humble, peaceful imagery
Mellow internal rhyme - place of resignation - whilst he hopes for an immortal name and glory, he undertsands such trophies require an acceptance of the normall ground to which every dead body must return

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Ideals of Ancient Greece

Using a metrical pattern that resembles the Sapphic form, a stana popularised by ancient Greek poet Sappho - passionate love poetry might have appealed to Byron - clearly on his mind in stanza 7

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Summary

A poem of mature resignation and youthful idealism - fitting for Byron. Motivated by dreams and eternal freedom, heroic martyrdom and agonised love, the speaker comes to terms with the irreducible fact - to be alive, means to one day be dead. Transcendant choice is to use one’s death for good

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Context

“On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year” is the final poem of George Gordon, Lord Byron, composed privately in his journal when he was preparing to join the Greek war of independence in 1824. Writing on his 36th birthday, Byron renounces the youthful joys of love for its mature pains, choosing self-sacrifice over self-indulgence. This turn is mirrored in his choice to go to war: he has lived long enough to seek a collective good over his personal satisfaction or safety (though he’s still got his eye on the honor that choice can provide). Maturity, the poem suggests, is the brave acceptance of change, pain, and death—and the ability to transform those frightening experiences into glory.

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Love, aging and maturity

The speaker of “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year,” writing on his birthday, renounces the youthful joys of love for its mature pains. Believing that he’s gone past the point of life when he can ever expect to be loved in return, the speaker nevertheless still wants to feel love, even if it can only bring him pain. His acceptance of the pain of love without love’s pleasures is a sign of a newfound maturity, one that will carry him into a more self-sacrificing phase of his life even as he regrets the springtime of his youth.
But he’s not giving up altogether. He still wants to feel love, even if he can’t “be beloved,” and he’s willing to “wear the chain” of unrequited love—to carry a weight unrelieved by pleasure. This willingness to suffer for love is both a burden of aging, the poem argues, and a sign of the strength the speaker has gained through aging. Love, for him, is no longer about the gratification of being loved back, but the experience of loving in itself, even when it hurts.

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Glory and sacrifice

As the poem’s speaker reaches middle age and turns away from love, he seeks out a new ideal: a glorious death on the battlefield. Comparing himself to an ancient Greek soldier, the speaker imagines giving up his life for a revolutionary cause—and thus entering a grand tradition of heroic warriors. The speaker’s choice to embrace self-sacrifice and death is noble, but not completely humble. In seeking such a death, he’s also seeking an immortal legacy as a legendary hero. Death, here, becomes not merely the tragic and inevitable end of life, but an opportunity to become an undying part of history.
In the second half of the poem, the speaker turns away from love to embrace death on the battlefield for a revolutionary cause. Not coincidentally, the speaker leaves behind the pleasures of love and moves towards death right at the midpoint of the poem, mirroring his sense that requited love must end at middle age.
This second part of his life will instead be devoted to “Glory,” in the form of a self-sacrificing death on the battlefield. This kind of death will make him like a Spartan hero, he thinks: he’ll become part of an illustrious ancient Greek tradition. The speaker’s embrace of a glorious death thus offers him a new kind of freedom. In sacrificing his life for a greater good, he becomes part of something bigger than himself.
The speaker’s association with legendary heroes suggests that part of maturity is seeing oneself as a small piece of a broader history, giving up the small individual pleasures of love in favor of the wider good of a nation or an ideal. Yet while the speaker ends his poem on a quiet note, seeking out “rest” in a common “soldier’s grave,” his renunciation of his own pleasures isn’t itself completely humble. His self-sacrificing embrace of death gives him a new energy and a new beauty, making him part of Greece’s grand tradition. In accepting the facts of aging, change, and death, and reaching out to a cause greater than his own personal pleasure, he hopes to gain an immortal legacy, redeeming himself from the indignity of decay.

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‘Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

That big change seems to be both to do with age and with love. This speaker can no longer “move” other hearts: no one, he believes, is going to love him back anymore. To a modern-day reader, the idea of being too old for love at 36 sounds a little silly, but this speaker seems deadly serious: this is a big enough deal that he needs to write a poem to commemorate his life change. (Indeed, this is likely an autobiographical poem; its author, Lord Byron, was a major celebrity and heartbreaker in his day, and as such he might well have felt washed-up as he moved out of full-blown youth.
This stanza is all one sentence, and its grammatical structure reflects back over itself across the central colon. The speaker also uses polyptoton here, repeating the related words “unmoved” and “move,” “beloved” and “love.” These repetitions, the same gist but slightly different, suggest that this speaker is moving not away from love completely, but into a different experience of love. He may not be loved back, but he longs to go on loving anyway.

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My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm—the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!

The speaker elaborates on his new position with vivid metaphors. His middle age, he says, is like autumn—a time when the rich “flowers and fruits” of love’s spring and summer are long past and the “yellow leaf” takes over. Autumn is a traditional symbol for aging and mortality. Here, the speaker applies that image not only to his experience of love, but to his failing body. When he imagines “The worm—the canker, and the grief” in line 7, he’s picturing not just the metaphorical decay of love with age, but the all-too-physical decay of the flesh. He sees himself withering like a tree and cankering like a diseased plant—and also, eventually, worm-eaten in his grave
Isolated and marked out, the last thought in each stanza thus gains special importance. This pattern gives the speaker a reflective air: he keeps working his way up to emphatic conclusions.
This meter also subtly suggests a theme that’s going to be important later in the poem: the ideals of ancient Greece. The speaker is using a metrical pattern that resembles (though it doesn’t exactly imitate) the Sapphic form, a kind of stanza popularized by the ancient Greek poet Sappho. Sappho’s passionate love poetry might have appealed to this speaker for more reasons than one as he wrote this poem; as the reader will soon discover, Greece is much on his mind.

The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some Volcanic Isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze
A funeral pile.

Finding more metaphorical inspiration in nature, the speaker pictures his unrequited love as different flavors of fire. Like the autumnal imagery above, the image of fire-as-passion is about as old as metaphor itself. This speaker is touching on deep, ancient images, suggesting that his feelings go right down to the roots of human experience.
The speaker first describes his love as a lonely “Volcanic Isle,” an isolated volcano seething with magma. This volcano might be all alone, but it’s still a volcano—a huge and terrifying force of nature. (Byron knew first-hand what volcanoes can do: he lived through the catastrophic “Year Without Summer” in 1816, when ash from a huge eruption in Indonesia created a chilly worldwide “volcanic winter.”) There’s a lot of potential energy in this volcanic passion, even if the speaker does experience it alone.
And he does seem to be very alone indeed: no other soul is lighting a “torch” at the “blaze” of this love. Indeed, the fire is a “funeral pile,” a cremation bonfire. Again, the speaker finds close links between images of love and death. His very body is consumed by his unrequited love—an image curiously similar to the consummation of the “worm” and the “canker” in the previous stanza. The powerful love he’s experiencing—now, in his middle years, when he’s already on his way to the grave—might be the death of him.

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of Love I cannot share,
But wear the chain

For a moment, the speaker moves away from metaphor and into a plain statement of his emotional experience. This, too, is overwhelming. He reflects on the love he’s shared in the past, listing all the feelings one might feel over the course of an affair. Even in the summer of youth, it seems, this speaker has had a tempestuous experience of love. He doesn’t remember good times holding hands in the sunshine, but rather “fear,” “jealous care,” and “pain,” alongside hope and exaltation.
Those first few lines use asyndeton—a poetic device in which clauses pile up one after the other, without conjunctions—to suggest both the intensity and the frequency of the speaker’s past love affairs. The percussive alliteration of “portion,” “pain,” and “power” adds yet more intensity to the lines. This is a man who’s had a lot of experience with love, and who has suffered over it deeply even when he has shared it with another.
But now, again, he’s all alone. That last line of iambic dimeter (“But wear the chain.”) does its usual work, marking out a final, grim thought: the speaker can no longer share love, but must wear its “chain.” This is a different kind of metaphor than those that have come before. This chain isn’t a natural phenomenon like a volcano or a season, but an image of human-made imprisonment.
This chain, however, contains the seeds of its own undoing. Chains are made to be broken—and this speaker will begin to see his chains differently in the next stanza

But ‘tis not thus—and ‘tis not here
Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now,
Where Glory decks the hero’s bier,
Or binds his brow.

Having spent the first four stanzas of the poem looking backward, this middle-aged poet reaches the midpoint of his poem, and makes a change. The shape of the poem thus mirrors the shape of his life.
This new phase begins with the important word “But.” This is no time for moping over lost love, the speaker tells himself: this is the place and time not for regret, but for “Glory.” The speaker has left the part of life when love was his foremost concern. But he’s not just moving into a void where love once was. He’s moving toward a new ideal of heroism, glory, and battle.
A focus on love and a focus on heroism, the speaker seems to suggest, are incompatible. He may still wear the “chain” of unrequited affection, but he’s going to have to put that aside to participate in the future that awaits him.
That future glows with big ideals. Here, “Glory” isn’t just an idea, but a personified character, capable of draping a dead war hero’s body with flowers or crowning him with the laurel wreath of victory. The fight he’s about to participate in is more than a matter of life and death: it’s a matter of immortality. In personifying “Glory” and evoking the ancient laurel wreath, the speaker suggests a legendary landscape of gods, goddesses, and heroes—a world of undying forces.
The speaker seems inspired and excited by this prospect, but not so much that he can just put aside his previous feelings. He has to exhort himself to turn away from his past: this is no time for sulking, Soul! The sounds of his words suggest just how difficult it is for him to make this change. The percussive alliteration of /b/ sounds in “bier,” “binds,” and “brow” fall like blows, as if the speaker is pounding his fist on the table, demanding that his lovesick heart pay attention.

The Sword, the Banner, and the Field,
Glory and Greece around us see!
The Spartan borne upon his shield
Was not more free.

Caught up in enthusiasm for his ideals, the speaker begins his next stanza with a trumpet-blast of warlike imagery, summoning “The Sword, the Banner, and the Shield”—all synecdoche for war itself.
This is no ordinary war that the speaker will fight, but rather a war deeply connected to history, mythology, and philosophy. As his previous images of laurel wreaths and his use of the Sapphic form have already suggested, he’s in Greece, fighting in a war for independence. Greece isn’t just a country to him, but an idea. The alliteration that sonically connects “Glory” and “Greece” reflects this, linking the two terms on the level of sound just as they are linked in the speaker’s mind. Ancient Greek philosophy built the foundation for European ideals, and in fighting for Greece, this speaker is also fighting for the very idea of liberty itself.
He’s also connecting himself to a tradition of heroism. The “Spartan” that he mentions in this stanza alludes to the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, a place famous for its ferocious warriors. If he’s going to be like a Spartan, he’s going to be a truly heroic figure, one whose name will be remembered even after death.

Seek out—less often sought than found—
A Soldier’s Grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy Ground,
And take thy rest.

That urge to fight for freedom has as much to do with a desire to escape pain as it does to gain honor. While the speaker is in many ways moving toward a new maturity, willing to give up his own life for the sake of a greater good and to bear the pain of love all alone, he’s also complex: no untouchable hero, but a still-vulnerable human.
The speaker’s impassioned apostrophe to his own soul carries him right to the end of the poem. His last instruction to himself is to “[s]eek out [… a] Soldier’s Grave”—though, as he wryly remarks, fewer people look for this grave than find it, whether they wanted to or not. There, his spirit can at last “take thy rest.”
This is a strangely humble and peaceful image, considering everything that’s led up to it. A restful “Soldier’s Grave” isn’t quite the same thing as a flowery bier decorated by the goddess of Glory, or a Spartan’s bloodstained shield. It’s a much gentler and a much less heroic resting place. The mellow internal rhyme he uses to describe it (“Then look around, and choose thy Ground”) suggests that such a death will be peaceful and fitting, just as the slant rhyme in the first stanza evoked the painful mismatch of unrequited love.
The speaker thus comes to a place of resignation. While he hopes for glory and triumph and an immortal name, he also understands that earning such trophies requires an acceptance of the normal old “Ground” to which every dead body must return.
In the end, then, this is a poem both of mature resignation and youthful idealism—fitting for a man poised between youth and old age. Motivated by dreams of eternal freedom, heroic martyrdom, and agonized love, the speaker nonetheless comes to terms with the irreducible fact: to be alive means, one day, to be dead. The transcendent choice is to use one’s death for good.

Autumn

Autumn, here, represents the speaker’s own middle age, and the bodily and emotional decay that comes with it. Having in his youth experienced plenty of the “flowers and fruits of Love,” he now feels himself to have moved into the time of “the yellow leaf,” when the landscape of love begins to falter and wither. This image suggests not only the fading of possibilities for love, but also the fading of the body. When the speaker describes the “worm—the canker, and the grief” of unrequited love, he also evokes the physical degradation of age, or even the decay of the grave. These images prepare the speaker’s later embrace of a heroic death; if he’s got to go out, he’s going to go out with a bang.

Fire

Fire is often used as a symbol for love—think of people who say their hearts are on fire. Here, the fires of love are complicated by their links to death. The speaker seems to have been embroiled in some shared love-fires in his past. Now, his feelings burn dramatically, but all alone, like the magma of an isolated volcano. The image of the volcano also suggests that those feelings might have to burst out somewhere, even if they can’t be consummated in shared love. The volcanic fire might be remote, but it’s also powerful.
The speaker’s comparison between the blaze of his love and a “funeral pile,” a pyre upon which a body is burned, also suggests that the painful love he feels will be his last. This love will be the death of him, and the death of love for him.

Chains

The “chain” the speaker refers to here is a symbol of the entangling heaviness of unrequited love. The speaker willingly accepts this chain, glad to carry the weight of love even if he can’t take part in its “exalted” pleasures. But it’s worth noting that he’s also come to Greece specifically to fight against another kind of symbolic “chain”: the chains of political oppression. Chains are made to be broken; they’re an image of imprisonment, but also of potential liberation. Like the earlier volcano (see the Symbols entry on “Fire”), these chains carry a lot of potential energy: the speaker, in turning from love as an outlet, will instead devote his passion to a grander cause.

The Spartan

- Sparta was a Greek city-state famous for its unbeatable warriors, and the Spartan who appears here symbolizes warlike Greek virtue itself. The speaker associates himself with this Spartan, who has died dramatically on the battlefield—and become "free" in doing so. The dead Spartan's prowess, independence, and self-sacrifice stand for all the virtues the speaker reaches out for, having turned at last from the pleasures of love. - The Spartan also suggests how the speaker's resolve to die for Greek independence might connect him to the broader sweep of time. Spartans are not merely historical, but almost legendary. The speaker, in following this Spartan, wishes his death to be more than useful. He wants glory, and the Spartan provides an example and an image of just that. Synedoche - helps to emphasize the epic, archetypal forces of war. When the speaker refers to "The Sword, the Banner, and the Field" in line 21, he's using physical elements of warfare to refer to war as a whole. But he's doing so in a highly specific way that connects him to the whole history of war, rather than a single particular war.

Form

- "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year" is made up of 10 quatrains (four-line stanzas). This shape gives the poem's ideas room to build up. In the morose first four stanzas, the speaker laments his lost youth and the end of love. Then, right at the middle of the poem, he pointedly turns from these concerns, moving his attention from love to war. The last five stanzas gain energy and zeal as the speaker explores his new commitment to glory, honor, and self-sacrifice on the battlefield. - There's something poignant about the way this poem moves. The speaker feels he has reached middle age, and the shape of the poem, breaking in the middle, suggests the way that he's given the first half of his life to love. The second part of his poem is longer than the first; the second part of his life, however, seems likely to be considerably shorter. If all goes as he expects it to, his thirty-sixth year will be his last. Thus, this poem might be considered an elegy of a sort: a lament for a great man dead too soon, written by the man himself.

Meter

- But this is just part of the speaker's conversational rhythm: the slight irregularity allows the line to flow naturally within a pretty rigorous structure. The reader might also see a thematic connection here; just as the speaker redirects the sweeter passion of love into the stern, idealistic passion of war, he fits an intuitive rhythmic pattern into a stylized form. - This poem's metrical scheme is fittingly Greek: it resembles (though it doesn't exactly imitate) the complex Sapphic stanza form, named after the great Greek poet Sappho. Sappho's own intense, passionate love poetry might well have been on Byron's mind as he composed.

Setting

This poem doesn't spend too much time evoking its environment, but from its context and references, the reader can establish that it's set in Greece. This Greece isn't merely a country to the speaker, but a land with legendary associations. In comparing himself to a Spartan warrior on an archetypal battlefield, the speaker suggests that Greece carries symbolic weight as a place of individual liberty and bravery—a country for heroes to live (and die) in. The Greece of this poem marries historic grandeur to contemporary revolutionary idealism; its terrain, for this speaker, is both a dreamlike, epic backdrop for his emotional life, and a place for genuine life-or-death courage and sacrifice.

Historical context

- "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year" comes straight out of the heart of the Greek War of Independence (1821-1830). This bloody conflict, in which the Greeks successfully took back control of their country from the oppressive Ottoman Empire, was inspired by Enlightenment and Romantic ideals of liberty and democracy, and caught the imagination of many fervent revolutionary thinkers across Europe. - As this poem demonstrates, Greece already played a symbolic role in the European imagination as the cradle of philosophy and classical virtue, and Byron's passionate commitment to the Greek cause was as idealistic as it was practical. Byron's involvement in the War of Independence was a boon to Greece: his fame brought even more attention and sympathy to the fight, and when he died in the war (albeit of a fever rather than on the battlefield), he became a Greek national hero, just as he presages in this final poem.