On May 3, 1810 — 113 years ago today — George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) swam to Asia from Europe. Or at least to Abydos, on the Turkish side of the Dardanelles (also called the Hellespont, the narrow passage that, together with the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara, forms the passage that connects the Black Sea with the Mediterranean) from Sestos, on the European side. The fast current, cold on an early spring morning, pushed the swim to what was estimated as four miles, which Byron completed in an hour and ten minutes. (He was beaten by five minutes by his fellow swimmer, a British naval lieutenant, William Ekenhead, from HMS Salsette, which Byron was visiting.)

The reason for the swim lies in the classical learning that England considered education to be. In an ancient myth, told by Ovid and others, Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite living in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the strait, loved Leander, a young man from Abydos on the Asian side. So Leander would swim the Hellespont to visit her, then swim back so no one would know. And, it striking the poet that no one had tested the story, Lord Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead decided to see if the journey was possible. In the myth, Leander would drown during an especially hazardous crossing on his last visit, and Byron rather doubted the story. He would write in a letter to a friend, “the current renders it hazardous, so much so, that I doubt whether Leander’s conjugal powers must not have been exhausted in his passage to Paradise.”

But the effort to test the myth’s practicality also led to today’s Poem of the Day, “Written After Swimming From Sestos To Abydos.” In tetrameter quatrains, Byron tells in the comedy of his swim — and includes one of his signature comic devices, using two words to rhyme with one in a feminine rhyme: plàgue you and àgue (an old word for a fever). Leander swam for love, and Byron for glory, but they both ended up losing: The ancient mythological lover drowned, and the modern Romantic poet caught a cold.

Written After Swimming From Sestos To Abydos
by Lord Byron

If, in the month of dark December, 
  Leander, who was nightly wont 
(What maid will not the tale remember?) 
  To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont! 

If, when the wintry tempest roar’d, 
  He sped to Hero, nothing loth, 
And thus of old thy current pour’d, 
  Fair Venus! how I pity both! 

For me, degenerate modern wretch, 
  Though in the genial month of May, 
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch, 
  And think I’ve done a feat today. 

But since he cross’d the rapid tide, 
  According to the doubtful story, 
To woo, — and — Lord knows what beside, 
  And swam for Love, as I for Glory; 

’Twere hard to say who fared the best: 
  Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you! 
He lost his labour, I my jest; 
  For he was drown’d, and I’ve the ague.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past, together with the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.