she walks in beauty

1 She walks in beauty

It is written in 1814. It was the first of several poems to be set to Jewish tunes from

the synagogue by Isaac Nathan, which was published as Hebrew Melodies in 1815.

This poem is not necessarily a love poem, but more of a celebration of the subject’s

beauty. Some critics have said that Byron fell passionately in love with his cousin and

wrote this poem for her. He met her for the first time when she was in mourning over

the death of a loved one. Thus, in modest lack dress, Byron encountered his cousin,

known for her great beauty, and was taken aback.

"She Walks in Beauty‖ is frequently considered one of his most powerful works. It

is an eighteen-line poem, much shorter than Byron's famous narrative poems. But

despite its relative brevity, "She Walks in Beauty" has become one of the most

well-known and easily recognized poems written by Byron. It is a lyric poem

centering on the extraordinary beauty of a young lady. Lord Byron wrote the poem in

1814 and published it in a collection, Hebrew Melodies, in 1815. As the name of the

volume suggests, the poems in that volume were written to be set to music.

On the evening of June 11, 1814, Byron attended a party with his friend, James

Wedderburn Webster, at the London home of Lady Sarah Caroline Sitwell. Among the

other guests was the wife of Byron’s cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Anne Beatrix Wilmot,

who was newly widowed and wore a black mourning gown brighten with spangles.

Her exquisite good looks dazzled Byron and inspired him to write ―She Walks in

Beauty.‖

As the title says, She walks in beauty, the main theme of the poem is the description

of a lady, the enumeration of certain qualities that the author considers give her beauty.

The introduction of the verb to “walk” in the title is important because it gives

connotations of advancing, not only in space but also in time. It makes reference to

the movement of walking, introducing the reader this way into a reading which is

going to be constant through out the entire poem. The poem uses images of light and

darkness interacting to describe the wide spectrum of elements in a beautiful woman's

personality and looks.

Unlike common love poetry, which makes the claim that its subject is filled with 2 beauty, this poem describes its subject as being possessed by beauty. This woman

does have beauty within her, but it is to such a great degree that she is actually

surrounded by it, like an aura. To some extent, her positive attributes create her beauty,

and so the poem makes a point of mentioning her goodness, her serenity, and her

innocence, which all have a direct causal effect on her looks.

The three six-line stanzas of this poem all follow the same rhyme scheme and the

same metrical pattern. There are only six rhyming sounds in this eighteen-line poem

because the poem rhymes ababab, cdcdcd, efefef . Oftentimes poets use their poetic

structures to mirror what the poem's chief concerns are. Poetic form—stanzas and

meter—and content—what the poem's subject is—are almost always related. The

meter is also very regular—iambic tetrameter.

The pairing of two rhyming sounds in each stanza works well because the poem

concerns itself with the two forces—darkness and light—at work in the woman's

beauty, and also the two areas of her beauty—the internal and the external. The

rhyming words themselves, especially in the first stanza, have importance: notice how

"night" rhymes with its opposites, "light" and "bright," in the same way that this

woman contains the two opposing forces in her particular type of beauty.

The first couple of lines can be confusing if not read properly. Too often readers

stop at the end of the first line where there is no punctuation. This is an enjambed line,

meaning that it continues without pause onto the second line. That she walks in

beauty like the night may not make sense as night represents darkness. However, as

the line continues, the night is a cloudless one with bright stars to create a beautiful

mellow glow. The first two lines bring together the opposing qualities of darkness and

light that are at play throughout the three verses. The remaining lines of the first verse

employ another set of enjambed lines that tell us that her face and eyes combine all

that's best of dark and bright. No mention is made here or elsewhere in the poem of

any other physical features of the lady.

The focus of the vision is upon the details of the lady's face and eyes which reflect

the mellowed and tender light. She has a remarkable quality of being able to contain

the opposites of dark and bright. The third and fourth lines are not only enjambed, but