Highlight Poetry (5)

  Highlight Poetry is a meme created by Lace & Lavender Hints to celebrate a poem once a week.
Farewell
by Lord Byron

Farewell! if ever fondest prayer
For other’s weal availed on high,
Mine will not all be lost in air,
But waft thy name beyond the sky.
’Twere vain to speak, to weep, to sigh:
Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,
When wrung from guilt’s expiring eye,
Are in that word—Farewell!—Farewell!

These lips are mute, these eyes are dry;
But in my breast and in my brain,
Awake the pangs that pass not by,
The thought that ne’er shall sleep again.
My soul nor deigns nor dares complain,
Though grief and passion there rebel;
I only know we loved in vain—
I only feel—Farewell!—Farewell!

I looked up this poem because it was used as the song Blanche Ingram sings in the 2011 Jane Eyre film.  There are reasons why this was a fantastic choice for that scene in the film, as a nod to the scene in the book (by Lord Byron from The Corsair) but I love this poem as a precursor to what happens in the book/film.  Jane has to leave Mr. Rochester and though her "grief and passion there rebel" she will leave, and I feel like the whole poem shows how Jane feels perfectly.