Lara

Lara by George Gordon Byron is about the rhymed, tragic narrative poem by Lord Byron first published in 1814. The narrative poem recounts the story of the fateful return of Count Lara to his home after spending years abroad traveling the Orient. One of Byron's footnotes explains that, even though the name "Lara" is of Spanish origin, "no circumstance of local or national description fix[es] the scene or hero of the poem to any country or age". Excerpt: "The Poems afterward entitled "Occasional Pieces," which were included in the several editions of the Collected Works issued by Murray, 1819-1831, numbered fifty-seven in all. They may be described as the aggregate of the shorter poems written between the years 1809-1818, which the author thought worthy of a permanent place among his poetical works."