"Darkness" has an overarching sense of hopelessness. It was impossible for me to read it for symbolic meaning on my first couple of readings; I was too involved in the images themselves. The cannibalism left a knot in my stomach, and I think it's genius how Byron moves from grandiose language on the global scale to such small details as a specific dog guarding the corpse of a specific master. It is vague and very specific at the same time.
Byron's "Darkness" seems too dreamlike to be real yet too real to be just a dream. The reader can't help but feel that Byron has received a glimpse into the future. The last few words "She was the Universe", also remind me of Kali, a Hindu goddess sometimes associated with darkness and destruction. Reading those few lines I could have sworn I was reading an Eastern text.
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