The Banner of Five Byzants

Letitia Elizabeth Landon 1802 (Chelsea) – 1838 (Cape Coast)



St. George for merrie England !
Fling our banner to the breeze ;
That flag is borne to sweep the shore,
As it has swept the seas.

St. George for merrie England !
Our step is on the land,
Oh France ! thy sun is wrong to shine
On English battle-brand.

The pennons float o'er gallant ranks,
With heart and eye of flame :
Some ride to win their lady's grace ;
Some for a warrior's name.

I wear no colours in my cap,
And little do I care,
When monkish chronicles are writ,
Though my name be not there.

I will not fight for lady's love,
Life is a price too high ;
I will not shed my blood for what
A few soft words will buy.

And still less reck I of the fame
For which the madman bleeds ;
'Tis but a record on the page,
One of a thousand reads.

See, yonder sweeps my pennon brave,
With byzants scattered o'er
But sparingly, — they were my last —
Now I must fight for more.

I love the festal hall, where smiles
Light up the purple wine ;
And ever to win entrance there,
Or gold or steel must shine.

My banner, with its red byzants,
Points out the soldier's way —
On, on ! that golden crest must be,
The foremost in the fray !

The subject of this ballad is taken from an account of a young knight, Allan le Zouch, at the seige (sic) of Caerlaverock, who bore a banner set with five byzants.
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Submitted by Madeleine Quinn on May 05, 2016

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:16 min read
113

Quick analysis:

Scheme Abcb Aded xfxf xgxg xhxh fixi xxxc xege bjxj b
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,287
Words 249
Stanzas 10
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon was an English poet. Born 14th August 1802 at 25 Hans Place, Chelsea, she lived through the most productive period of her life nearby, at No.22. A precocious child with a natural gift for poetry, she was driven by the financial needs of her family to become a professional writer and thus a target for malicious gossip (although her three children by William Jerdan were successfully hidden from the public). In 1838, she married George Maclean, governor of Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast, whence she travelled, only to die a few months later (15th October) of a fatal heart condition. Behind her post-Romantic style of sentimentality lie preoccupations with art, decay and loss that give her poetry its characteristic intensity and in this vein she attempted to reinterpret some of the great male texts from a woman’s perspective. Her originality rapidly led to her being one of the most read authors of her day and her influence, commencing with Tennyson in England and Poe in America, was long-lasting. However, Victorian attitudes led to her poetry being misrepresented and she became excluded from the canon of English literature, where she belongs. more…

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