Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull
Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull Lyrics
In me behold the only skull
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.
I lived, I loved, I quaffed, like thee:
I died: let earth my bones resign;
Fill up - thou canst not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.
Better to hold the sparkling grape,
Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet's shape
The drink of gods, than reptile's food.
Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others' let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?
Quaff while thou canst: another race,
When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth's embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.
Why not? since through life's little day
Our heads such sad effects produce;
Redeemed from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs, to be of use.
About
Written at Newstead Abbey, 1808, and first published in the seventh edition of Childe Harold. Byron explained the origins of the poem as follows:
The gardener in digging [discovered] a skull that had probably belonged to some jolly friar or monk of the abbey, about the time it was dis-monasteried. Observing it to be of giant size, and in a perfect state of preservation, a strange fancy seized me of having it set and mounted as a drinking cup. I accordingly sent it to town, and it returned with a very high polish, and of a mottled colour like tortoiseshell."
—Medwin’s ‘Conversations’, 1824, p. 87
The tone of the poem is disdainful, the speaker is in fact the cup in anthropomorphised form, seeming to challenge death. It is worth noting that the skull is a symbolism for “Memento Mori”, a Medieval Latin Christian theory that can literally by translated as “remember death”. In the poem death is presented not as sacred but as something to accept, gruesome, but a reason to celebrate life on this earth while one can. In short carpe diem or seize the day..
(Byron’s skull cup, Nottingham)
Structure
The poem comprises six quatrains, that is, stanzas of four lines, each with an ABAB rhyme pattern, known as interlocking rhyme. The metrical rhythm is iambic tetrameter, that is four iambs or metrical feet per line, where a iamb is made up of one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable, The result is carefully crafted elegance, but a fast, choppy pace, suitable for the sophisticated, if absurd humour. The rhythm is cyclical, so that every quatrain is satisfyingly complete.
Language and Imagery
The voice is that of a first person narrator — the anthropomohttps://genius.com/3890110rphised cup that was a skull — addressing the reader or an unseen listener as the second person ‘you’. The tone is cynical, humorous and even disdainful. The poet, or the cup, uses short sentences, rhetorical questions, exclamations and clever use of punctuation, especially in stanza two.
The cup is a metaphor for death, which, according to the speaker, can be faced fearlessly. There should be nothing gruesome or repulsive about drinking from a cup made from a skull … or at least not if one has the right attitude to life.
About the Romantic Poets
Byron was one of the ‘big six’ Romantic Poets, the others being Shelley, Worsdsworh, Coleridge, Blake and Keats.
A tenet of Romantic poetry is its focus on nature. The use of the word ‘wild’ evokes the supernatural and man’s insignificance in comparison to the natural world. It was a turbulent time when the Napoleonic Wars had not long ended and Europe was in a state of flux and unrest. In England the infamous Peterloo Massacre had occurred in August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd demonstrating against poor economic conditions and lack of parliamentary representation in the north of England..
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
Byron explained the origins of the poem as follows:
The gardener in digging [discovered] a skull that had probably belonged to some jolly friar or monk of the abbey, about the time it was dis-monasteried. Observing it to be of giant size, and in a perfect state of preservation, a strange fancy seized me of having it set and mounted as a drinking cup. I accordingly sent it to town, and it returned with a very high polish, and of a mottled colour like tortoiseshell."
—Medwin’s ‘Conversations’, 1824, p. 87
(Byron’s skull cup, Nottingham)
The poem is made of six quatrains of alternating rhyme (ABAB) in iambic tetrameter.
