Mazeppa: A Poem

Composed in 1819 by the great Romantic poet Lord Byron, this surging verse tale draws on a legend of the Cossack leader Ivan Mazepa (1639 – 1709). In his youth, so the story goes, Mazepa's love affair with a married Polish countess is discovered, and her husband exacts a savage revenge, lashing him to a stallion set free to gallop into the wilderness. Told years later to a weary king after battle, the poem races with the same headlong momentum as its doomed rider, a masterpiece of movement, endurance, and the sublime.