So impressed was Lord Byron that he devoted three stanzas to a spectacular evening twilight that he observed in Italy during August of 1817. "The Moon is up..." he wrote in the fourth canto, published in 1818, "…A Single Star is at her side." The stanzas hold enough clues to link the scene to the real events that inspired it—including the massive 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia.

"Wednesday August 20th 1817: Ride with Byron.  Return over the other side of the river from Dolo … Riding home, remarked the moon reigning on the right of us and the Alps still blushing with the gaze of the sunset.  The Brenta came down upon us all purple – a delightful scene, which Byron has put in three stanzas of his “Childe Harold.”