Lord Byron’s “Written After Swimming From Sestos to Abydos” asks which fate is worse: to die for love or live without glory. Byron himself swam across the Hellespont (now the Dardanelles), and compares his own swim to that of mythic Leander, who “swam for Love, as I for Glory; / ‘Twere hard to say who fared the best” (16-17)1. Byron references Leander of Greek myth: Leander, from the city of Abydos, had fallen in love with the priestess Hero of Sestos. He as a foreigner could not wed the city’s priestess, so asked Hero to light a lamp from her tower on the shore. He swam across the strait of Hellespont to meet her for many nights, but when winter came, wind snuffed out the lamp, and Leander drowned in rough seas. Hero, in her grief, jumped from her tower to ultimately die as well2.
The poem contrasts Byron’s swim with Leander’s to illustrate how modern times lack the vigor and vibrancy of days long gone. Referring to himself as “me, degenerate modern wretch,” Byron differentiates between his own swim during “the genial month of May,” and Leander’s journey “in the month of dark December” (9, 10, 1). In order to see his love, Leander risks his life and eventually pays a fatal price. Byron seems to chase thrills and grand achievements, as he ventures out for an exhilarating swim in mild springtime: “My dripping limbs I faintly stretch, / And think I’ve done a feat today” (10-12). He scoffs at his own perception, that his swim could be considered impressive when Leander’s deadly crossing exists.
He implies that death may not be the worst of fates, explaining that Leander “lost his labour, I my jest; / For he was drown’d and I’ve the ague” (19-20). He levels the severity of Leander’s drowning with his own ague. The waters of Hellespont set their violent touch on both Leander and Byron. While Leander perishes in an attempt at reunion with his love, Byron too looks the possibility of death in the eye– but for no greater reason than for pursuing his own selfish renown. Through the lens of epic love and mythology, Byron suggests that in his contemporary era, people have lost the will to make meaningful sacrifices. He envies the noble death Leander meets, in comparison to the sickened consequences of his own ego that he’s forced to live with.
1 History.com Editors. “Lord Byron Swims Across Tumultuous Hellespont Strait in Turkey.” HISTORY. April 30, 2021. Web. October 4, 2023. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lord-byron-swims-the-hellespont.
2 Norwood, Frances. “Hero and Leander.” Phoenix, vol. 4, no. 1, 1950, pp. 9–20. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1086873. Accessed 4 Oct. 2023.
I love your interpretation, and I feel like his differentiation between his own swim and Leander’s also serves as a form of self-praise. He puts himself down, but in a way where he doesn’t seem totally serious, and really just calls attention to the fact that he has made this long swim.