"When We Two Parted" - Lord Byron

On the surface, it seems as though this poem is simply the speaker lamenting over a lost love. However, the relationship is not very specific, and it seems as though Byron is expressing the fact that love can delude and disappoint us, even when we desperately want it not to. There are many allusions to death, and perhaps Byron's anxieties about failed love reflect his anxieties about death. His grief is a private one, as he tells us "in silence I grieve." Even if we'd like to have love by the ends of our lives, dying is still a very private affair as well. The speaker reflects the fact that he is very alone and isolated. In losing the love he speaks of, a part of him has died. He seems to be full of dread and feeling even closer to his own inevitable death.