I will refer to the Norton for notes, so my page numbers refer to it.  (Brit Lit 2 5th Ed)  This is a travelogue and the first two books were actually written during the trips that he is describing.  He was 21 in 1812 when these were written, and he published them when he got back to England.  They made him a star overnight.  Then, in 1816, when he was 28 he continued the series.  The fourth and last book was written finally in the first person, though he had described the protagonist as Childe Harold previously.  The third canto, which is what I must read for the exam, is clear enough in its protagonist, however, since it starts by talking about his child Ada, who was born a mere month before he and his wife were estranged; he never saw his child again!  The last book was published 2 years later in 1818.  As mentioned above, this is written in the Spencerian stanza:  all iambic pentameter except for the last line in hexameter:  ababbcbcc.
 
     Stanzas 1-28:  The beginning of "Once More Upon the Waters," which is Norton's editorial subheading here:  the top of the third Canto.  It begins with a dreamlike reverie in which Byron is thinking about Ada, his baby.  But in mid-line he is startled awake, and he is revealed to be actually aboard ship, leaving England.  He re-introduces our long-lost protagonist Childe Harold, and resumes his tale of him.  He emphasizes what is echoed later in Manfred:  experience can age people, just as surely as long life can:  "He. . .grown aged in this world of woe, / In deeds, not years. . .thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife / With airy images, and shapes which dwell / Still unimpaired, though old, in the soul's haunted cell."  (Sza 5)  He depicts the "soul of my thought" (Harold) as traveling along with him, "invisible but gazing, as I glow. . ."  Harold is "He of the breast which fain no more would feel, / Wrung with the wounds which kill not but ne'er heal."  ". . .he knew himself the most unfit / Of men to herd with Man, with whom he held / Little in common; untaught to submit / His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled / In youth by his own thoughts."  (szas 8, 10).  So at the end of the introduction, Byron reports that "Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again, / With nought of hope left--but with less of gloom."  (16)  Then the next section, subtitled by Norton "Waterloo," which is in Belgium, it seems.  Harold muses over the "Empire's dust" and the meaning of the battlefields, The battle is described with chatterings of alliteration, such as "He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell."   Good to point out that at the time of Canto 3's composition, the battle of Waterloo was scarcely a year gone.      
      Stanzas 36-45.  "Napoleon".  He then muses about Napoleon, and describes him in a very Byronic way.  Classical allusions to Alexander the Great and others.
     Stanzas 68-78:  "Switzerland"  Looking at Lake Leman, aka Lake Geneva, in Geneva.  "To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind."  Norton's footnotes are valuable here.  Basically, Byron and Shelley (PB) had lived in Geneva and had toured the lake together.  At that time, Shelley had introduced Wordsworth's concepts of nature to Byron, and some concepts are echoed here, though it's still characteristic of Byron's poetic voice.  

     This 16-line brief poem in 4 aabb stanzas of anapestic tetrameter (with variations) is about fame.  Byron uses metonymy to refer to myrtle (Venus's love) and ivy (Bacchus's hedonism) and says that both are better than "all of your laurels" (high honor), all Greek references, though this was written in Italy.  Essentially he asserts that the revelry and sensual pleasures of "two and twenty"--synecdochal reference to youth--are better than fame and old age.  The only fame that Byron apostrophizes about as being worthy is that which gives more love as well as glory--as in when his paramour saw his fame and therefore thought he was worthy of her love.    This poem uses exclusively feminine rhymes.  Perhaps I should change my Immoral Bard version to "Stanzas Written on the Road between Florence and Lisa"?