Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
![Frontispiece to a c. 1825 edition of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
Flashing a far,—and at his iron feet
Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done.
For on this morn three potent nations meet,
To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.](/Images/godic/202501/17/Lord_Byron_-_Childe_Harold's_Pilgimage_-_Dugdale_edition4302.jpg")
![Charlotte Harley (1801–1880) as Ianthe, to whom Byron dedicated Childe Harold.](/Images/godic/202501/17/Richard_Westall_&_W._Finden,_Ianthe4302.jpg")
![Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1823.](/Images/godic/202501/17/Childe_harold4302.jpg")
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.