“Fare thee well, and if for ever, · Still for ever fare thee well.”

The expression “Fare thee well, and if for ever, / Still for ever fare thee well.” is a two-line quotation from Byron used as the epigraph to “The Great World.” Its movement from a conditional farewell to an emphatic repetition gives the parting a lasting weight, framing the work’s final canto with an image of leave-taking that may be permanent.

Form and Attribution

The epigraph is printed across two lines, with the second repeating and intensifying the first: if the farewell is forever, it remains forever. The words are attributed to Byron. The evidence identifies the quotation and its placement but does not specify its original source or supply further context for Byron’s lines.

Placement and Significance

The quotation appears immediately before the first canto of “The Great World,” whose contents page gives the setting and dates as St. Petersburg, Boldino, and Tsarskoe Selo, 1880–1881. Positioned at the threshold of that work, the farewell introduces a note of finality before the narrative begins. The available text does not identify a particular character or event as its referent, so its significance here rests on its epigraphic role: a borrowed parting, poised between the possibility of separation and the certainty of its repeated words.