“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY” BY LORD BYRON

·        Introduction

“She walks in beauty” is a poem written by Lord Byron, an Anglo-Scottish poet and a leading figure in Romanticism, in 1814 and published in Hebrew Melodies in 1815. He wrote this poem when he was 26 years old. The poem was inspired by the poet’s first sight of his young cousin by marriage, Anne Wilmot. According to literary historians, Byron’s cousin wore a black gown that was brightened with spangles. This information is found in Answers.com.

We can get a full biography of Byron and really very good explained in Wikipedia; here I have selected some important aspects of him: George Gordon Byron (best known as Lord Byron) was born in London in 1788. Lord Byron's fame rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and allegations of incest and sodomy, he did all this because he was a revolutionary poet in his time. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization the Carbonari in its struggle against Austria, and later traveled to fight against the Turks in the Greek War of Independence, for which the Greeks consider him a national hero. He died from a febrile illness in Messolonghi in 1824.

He dominated literary Europe, where he was seen as the prophet and champion of liberty, though ironically he was known only through prose translations of his poems.

·        Analysis of the poem

She walks in beauty, like the night

        Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

     And all that's best of dark and bright

        Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

5    Thus mellowed to that tender light

        Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

     One shade the more, one ray the less,

        Had half impaired the nameless grace

     Which waves in every raven tress,

10      Or softly lightens o'er her face;

     Where thoughts serenely sweet express

        How pure, how dear, their dwelling-place.

     And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

        So soft, so calm, so eloquent,

15   The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

        But tell of days in goodness spent,

     A mind at peace with all below,

        A heart whose love is innocent!

Helped by the basic elements in poetry we can clearly see that “She walks in beauty” is composed by eighteen verses but divided in three parts according to its rhyme scheme of six-verse in each stanza. The rhyme that the poem follows is ababab, cdcdcd, efefef. The meter is also very regular: iambic tetrameter, because we have an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable; we have eight syllables in each verse, this means four unstressed syllable and four stressed syllable, therefore a poem of four feet.

Analysing the meaning of the poem, we can see it was written for a woman, the only person who appears in the poem is a girl and as I said before, many literary historians think the poem was written when Byron met his cousin and was surprised by her beauty; we do not know really if it is true or not but it could be, why not?

Another clue to think the poem was written for a woman and which will be the main topic is the title, even if we have not read the poem, only with the title we can have an idea of what the poem is about.

Now, in a deeper analysis and after read the poem, the first thing we can clearly see is an opposition between darkness and light, but all the time showing beauty in both parts, the most beautiful things of darkness and the most beautiful things of light. Byron used the light to describe the girl (her face, skin…) however he used darkness in order to describe her clothes, the place… Although the author is comparing her with the night, it is not any night, the night he uses for the comparison is special because it has not clouds and it is full of stars, this means the girl is extremely beautiful and of course, for him a night with that characteristics is amazing.

Girl’s face is described full of light so we can imagine her with a light skin and a very expressive aspect. The light skin also means she was a very well-positioned girl. With the description the author gives us, our first thought is a girl very young and still pure and innocent because the adjectives used are very sweet and the author somehow expresses a special feeling for the lady in the way he writes about her, that made me think the historians theory could be true.

Apart from physically imagination we get an impression about her and the first one which came to my mind was she is good, as the poem says, she is a calm, soft and eloquent person and she transmits me a warm feeling, the same which the author has. We can think all of this because he tells us she has a smile in her face and a heart full of innocent love, a young lady fell in love.

The vocabulary used by the author is very sentimental, the expressions highlights even more her beauty; adjectives are explanatory and used in an affective way, that is why we also see the girl with tender eyes. Some examples of this expressions are:

-         “cloudless climes and starry skies” (l. 2)

-         “tender light” (l. 5)

-         “where thoughts serenely sweet express how pure, how dear, their dwelling-place.” (l. 11-12)

-         “so soft, so calm, so eloquent” (l. 14)

·        RELATION OF THE POEM WITH THE POET

After reading in the Wikipedia Byron’s biography we know “She walks in beauty” is not one of the best-known poem because “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage” and “Don Juan” are. It is one of his minor works but not for this of less importance; in fact, since my point of view, the topic of the poem is one of the preferred by the people because if we trust the theory the poem was written for his cousin and he had a special feeling over her, that gives pleasure and curiosity to the reader because it is something “forbidden”. This kind of incestuous was not new for him since, as I read, he had maintained a relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh so he could think, why not with my cousin?

Although the poem does not mention or allude to love we can believe he was fell in love of her and he had a special interest because she was pure, the fact of being the first man who stay with her gave him the necessity of get her.

As we can find in his biography, his father had two wives afterwards we should not be too much surprised of his love adventures.

·        HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND INFLUENCE IN TODAY’S SOCIETY

The poem was published in 1814 so the time when it was written was in the middle of Byron’s love affairs and also after the scandal about the relationship with Augusta Leigh. At the same time of all this love affairs he was starting a political life and writing one of his most famous works: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. At this moment he was thriving as in his professional career as in his personal life.

Later he married with Anne Isabella Milbanke and it seems he would be quiet but it was not, their marriage was unhappy and he started again his love adventures but this time through Europe.

According to Answers.com “Lord Byron belongs to the second phase of romanticism in England, which began early in the nineteenth century”. We know romanticism was the period of expressing feelings therefore, the poem was clearly his deeper feelings for his cousin hided in a poem.

In today’s society, without realizing of it, Byron has a big influence; as we can see, his famous work Don Juan is used as an expression, I explain to myself, most of people do not read the play however when a man goes out with lots of women people say he is a “Don Juan” because it is said that in the play Don Juan was a man who had many relation with women, even with a nun.

Leaving that rumours apart, I read in the Wikipedia that  the poem “She Walks in Beuty” was used by the singer and songwriter Arion Quinn who recorded his own arrangement of the poem sometime in the mid-70s and though it was never commercially released in his lifetime it can be heard for free on his MySpace account, which is maintained by his nephew. Another arrangement was performed by vocalist Sissel and The Philharmonia Orchestra for the soundtrack of the 2004 production of Vanity Fair. London Below also choose this as the first poem for their "Long Dead Poets" project. The poem is not one of his major works but here we have the proof that is also has a great importance.

Not only with this poem, actually Byron has an extended influence around the world, for example “Today some 36 International Byron Societies function throughout the world, and an International Conference takes place annually. Hardly a year passes without a new book about the poet appearing. In the last 20 years two new feature films about him have screened, and a television play has been broadcast” says Wikipedia.

Byron’s life and poems have a great influence in today’s films and songs as we can find in Wikipedia. Byron is a character that fascinates many people. A few examples of this fascination found in films are:

·       Byron's spirit is one of the title characters of the "Ghosts of Albion" books by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden, published by Del Rey in 2005 and 2006.

·       Byron is an immortal still alive in modern times in the hit television show Highlander: The Series in the 5th season episode The Modern Prometheus, living as a decadent rock star.

·       John Crowley's novel Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (2005) involves the rediscovery of a lost manuscript by Lord Byron, as does Frederick Prokosch's The Missolonghi Manuscript (1968).

·       The Black Drama by Manly Wade Wellman (Weird Tales, 1938; Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales, 2001) involves the rediscovery and production of a lost play by Byron (from which Polidori's The Vampyre was plagiarised) by a man who purports to be a descendant of the poet.

Another examples of this fascination are the most recent songs based in Byron’s poems:

·       Ariella Uliano - "So We'll Go No More A'Roving" (2004)

·       Cockfighter (band) - "Destruction" (2005)

·       Leonard Cohen - "No More A-Roving" (2004)

·       Cradle Of Filth - "The Byronic Man" (2006)

·        CONCLUSION AND PERSONAL OPINION

Finally, after this deep analysis of Byron’s life and the poem I will conclude this paper with my own point of view.

As I see through the paper, Byron was an independent man with any responsibility, his behaviour was impulse by his necessities. When he wanted a woman he get it and afterwards he was free again, working in what he wanted, writing.

I admire him in some way because he did what he liked to do. Get your goals is a very difficult thing, but on the other hand I also think he was never be a responsible man and treated the women like sexual objects, toys for him; like a person without feelings, he was selfish and immature.

His works are amazing, most of them reflected his feelings, for example for a woman. Writing for him was also a good way to express forbidden things, society, as everybody knows, love to read about forbidden things so his success was guaranteed although he did not know.

·        REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gordon_Byron,_6th_Baron_Byron

http://www.answers.com/topic/she-walks-in-beauty-poem-6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_Walks_in_Beauty