The oppressive and unseasonably cold and stormy weather of the ‘Year Without a Summer’ in Switzerland inspired Byron to write Darkness – a poetic reflection of the actual ‘volcanic winter’ they were experiencing (caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora).
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| The Last Man Standing (1849) by John Martin |
The story
A stark secular apocalypse, the poem begins with a chilling disclaimer – “I had a dream, which was not all a dream.” It describes a world where the sun has been extinguished, leaving the stars to wander in eternal space.
Humanity initially tries to fight the darkness by burning everything – homes, palaces and forests
– so they can see each other’s faces.
As resources fail, social order collapses. Governments vanish and people fall into a “selfish
prayer for light”. Nature is the first to die - as birds drop from the sky and wild beasts become
tame in their terror. Eventually humans turn to cannibalism. The poem narrows its focus to two
survivors who come across the embers of a holy fire. When they see each other’s gaunt, famine-stricken faces by the last flickering light, they die of pure horror.
In the middle of the poem’s global carnage, a faithful dog serves as the lone symbol of selfless
loyalty in a world that has turned cannibalistic. While humans are ‘glutting’ themselves on one
another, ‘gnashing’ their teeth in despair, the dog stands guard over the body of his dead
master. It keeps birds, beasts and ‘famished’ men away from the corpse, refusing to let
anything desecrate the remains.
Unlike the humans who succumb to ‘selfish’ survival, the dog refuses to eat. After a long, lonely
vigil, the dog licks the hand of its master, who fails to respond, and lets out a piteous and
perpetual moan” and a quick “desolate cry” - then dies of exhaustion and grief.
Once again, Byron uses the dog to deliver a biting critique of humanity. He suggests that dogspossess a nobility that humans will lose the moment their comfort is stripped away. This reflects Byron’s lifelong affinity for dogs – notably his own dog Boatswain - whom he described as possessing “all the virtues of man without his vices”.
For more information on Boatswain and Byron’s affinity with dogs, head for - Byron’s Faithful Dogs (B) and Boatswain and Byron’s Newfoundland Dogs (BB)
