This poem was written in 1810, for a young Athenian girl called Teresa Makri. The Greek refrain is translated by Byron as, "My Life, I love you," a phrase which he calls "a Romaic expression of tenderness."
The word Ζωή, in the Greek language, signifies both life, and the proper name Zoe; so that the refrain has often been interpreted as a pun, meaning both "My life, I love you," and, "My Zoe, I love you." I find that the earliest editions of the poem, at any rate, significantly give a capital letter to the word "life," as it appears in Byron's translation. e. g. in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a Romaunt," published in 1812 (where the poem first appears), we read: "My Life, I love you."
Curiously, a similar kind of pun (following the Hebrew) is also used in the Septuagint, over 2000 years ago:
καὶ ἐκάλεσεν Αδαμ τὸ ὄνομα τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ Ζωή, ὅτι αὕτη μήτηρ πάντων τῶν ζώντων.
And Adam called the name of his wife, Life (Ζωή), because she was the mother of all living (ζώντων). -- Genesis 3.20, transl. by Brenton.
A footnote from Byron, on the word "token-flowers":
"In the East (where ladies are not taught to write, lest they should scribble assignations), flowers, cinders, pebbles, etc., convey the sentiments of the parties, by that universal deputy of Mercury—an old woman. A cinder says, "I burn for thee;" a bunch of flowers tied with hair, "Take me and fly;" but a pebble declares—what nothing else can."
-
Transcript:
Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
