I was thinking about love as more immense than geography.

Peter Bruun

In perhaps the consummate of literary ironies, notorious lothario George Gordon Lord Byron met his final and surpassing love while in Italy writing his epic poem Don Juan. Eighteen-year-old Countess Teresa Guiciolli, married just a few days to 60-year-old Count Guiciolli, felt a passion for Byron that her marriage of convenience had not awoken in her.  Overcome with desire, Byron refused to be constrained by the discretion typical of Italians in such affairs, and the two scandalized society with their early openness. Once noted for his relentless sexual charm and countless lovers, Byron was smitten, behaving according to friends as if this were his first love. For the rest of his life, Teresa was the only star on his horizon. Byron traveled to Greece 1824 to help the fight for independence, and died there at just 36, his one true love on his lips. She remained devoted, dying fifty years later with these enduring words at her side, binding them still.