Lara, A Tale

In this version, there is nothing to distinguish between Lara and Jacqueline (written by Samuel Rogers), as they were published anonymously and without any indication that there are two separate authors within the text.

The narrative poem recounts the story of the fateful return of Count Lara to his home after spending years abroad traveling the orient.

One of Byron's footnotes explains that, even though the name "Lara" is of Spanish origin, "no circumstance of local or national description fix[es] the scene or hero of the poem to any country or age".

Orphaned in youth (“With none to check, with few to point in time/ The thousand paths that slope the way to crime”), Lara had led a dissolute life at home until leaving abroad while quite young.

On a beautiful moonlit night, Lara's servants are awakened by an unearthly shriek from his hall, and they run in to find the count prostrate unconscious on the floor.

Having foreseen the threat, Lara has cultivated the sympathies of the oppressed peasantry of the country, who are ground underfoot by the haughty and detached nobility.

As Otho and his allies approach to gloat over Lara's fallen state, the count ignores them and dies while speaking with Kaled in a foreign tongue.

A postscript relates how a local woodcutter saw Sir Ezzelin's body being thrown in the lake by a masked horseman the night of his disappearance.