She walks in Beauty
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:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more,
one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
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, yet eloquent,
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! (1)
The aim
of this paper is to analyse the poem She Walks in Beauty, written by the
Romantic poet Lord Byron. By analyzing it, we will try to state if the poem
follows the topics and has the characteristics that a Romantic work is supposed
to have.
Analysis of the poem
Let us
start by analysing superficially the formal aspects of the poem.
“She
walks in Beauty” is composed by three stanzas of six verses each.
We can
find that the poem has rhythm, achieved by a tail rhyme that we observe along
the entire poem. For instance, this is the case of the words “night”, “bright”
and “light”; and “skies”, “eyes” and “denies” in the first stanza.
Moreover,
the rhythm is also achieved by enjambed lines (lines
that end without punctuation marks) that Byron uses in order to call the reader
attention towards certain words, as we will comment below.
Now that
the formal aspects are commented we will try to understand the poem by
describing the main ideas that we find in it and trying to connect these ideas
with the context: the Romanticism.
The first
question that we have to ask ourselves is: What did Byron mean with “She walks
in Beauty”? Let us start by the beginning of the poem, paying attention to the
ideas explained by Garry Gamber in his discussion of
the poem. (2)
In the
first two verses we are given the information that will be constantly repeated
along the entire poem: the contrast of light and darkness. So, Byron says that
“she walks in beauty, like the night”, what makes us think about darkness and
therefore the absence of light; but in the next line, he explains that it is a
“cloudless” and “starry” night, that brings the bright feeling.
As we
have pointed out before, this contrast is repeated along the poem, using words
referred to the light, like “bright”, “light”, “ray” or “glow”, and their
opposite words referred to darkness like “night”, “dark”, “shade” or “raven”.
But, what
does he use these opposite terms for? The aim of this is to explain that both
characteristics (light and darkness) are contained perfectly in the woman he is
describing. This point is found in the second couple of lines, where Byron says
that the best of light and dark meets
in her, remarking the word “meet” using an enjambed
line (a line that ends without punctuation marks, as we have explained before).
Furthermore,
the poet points out that the opposites melt in a soft way since they achieve to
create a “tender light” (line 5).
On the
other hand, it is important to remark that the poet is not only talking about
the physical aspect of a woman, but also about her mind and thoughts.
First,
Byron mentions her eyes (line 4) and this is very important for our analysis
because of the connection that the eyes and the soul had in the Romantic
period: the eyes were considered as the part of the body that reflected the
soul.
Moreover,
Byron also mentions the woman’ thoughts as sweet and serenely expressed ones
(line 11).
To
conclude the poem, we find the last six verse stanza.
The first
three verses make reference again to the physical aspect of the woman, but,
like in the rest of the poem, the description is limited to her face: cheek,
brow and smile.
Here we
find again adjectives that make us think in a tender and soft woman: “calm”, “soft” (line 14).
This
point is essential to Byron, because in the last three lines we see its consequence:
a peaceful mind. This is to say: the physical aspect of this woman is a
consequence of the peace that she has in her soul and in her thoughts. This
conveys a Romantic idea: her outer beauty mirrors her inner beauty.
To sum
up, in this poem, Lord Byron is describing a woman who contains opposites in
perfect proportions in her external and internal personality, pointing out that
her peaceful mind and thoughts are reflected in her perfect face.
The poem
in relation with
the rest of Byron poetic production
The poem we have just analysed, “She walks in Beauty” was written by
Lord Byron on
The poem was published in a collection of poems called “Hebrew Melodies”
in January of 1815. They were a group of 24 poems, the majority of them
inspired in Biblical topics. (4)
These poems were kind of songs to be set to traditional Jewish tunes, and Byron
himself introduce them by using these words: “"The subsequent poems were written at the request of my friend,
the Hon. D. Kinnaird, for a Selection of Hebrew Melodies,
and have been published, with the music, arranged, by Mr. BRAHAM and Mr.
NATHAN."(5)
However, as we can see in an article published by the
The collection includes short poems with different kinds of rhymes as
for instance “My soul is Dark”, “Sun of the Sleepless” or “The Destruction of
Sennacherib”.
They were not very appreciated by
Lord Byron, who did not give them a lot of importance.
But, in what moment of Byron’s life are the Hebrew Melodies written?
In January 1815, Byron, who is now around 27 years old, has already come
back from his travels around the world (
After publishing his work Lara in 1814, he writes “She walks in Beauty”
and some months later, he marries Anne Isabella Milbanke,
just before publishing the Hebrew Melodies.
The poem
and the Romanticism
Now that
we have already analysed the poem and we have also located it into Byron
biography, it is time now to try to point out which Romantic ideas we can
observe in the poem we are discussing.
The
Romanticism was a movement that took place in the 18th century in
the West of Europe and it had some characteristics that we can find in Byron’s
poem.
On the
one hand, the Romanticism “stressed
strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience” (7) and this is something that is clearly present in the poem we
are working on. The poem She Walks in Beauty is just a bridge that Byron
created to transmit the reader the intense feeling he experienced when he first
saw the woman he is describing. This way, he achieves to explain this aesthetic
experience by using words and rhetorical figures as comparison, and from my
point of view, the moment he lived and the feelings he had in that instant will
last forever thanks to this poem.
On the
other hand, another important characteristic of the Romanticism is the
inclination to talk about nature. This is also present in this poem, where the
author is constantly making reference to natural elements in order to describe
better what she felt when she met the woman he is talking about. Some examples
of these elements are: “night of
cloudless climes”, “starry skies”, “shade”, “ray” or “raven tress”.
Finally,
another characteristic of the Romanticism that I think that can be also found
in the poem would be the medievalism. In the middle Ages there was a
inclination in literature to put emphasis on women qualities and troubadours
used to sing to them in order to praise their qualities.(8) This is exactly what Byron is trying to do in this poem: he is
emphasizing the qualities of a woman and what he felt when she was before him.
To sump
up, after having analysed this poem and after having enumerated the Romantic
features that we can find in the poem, we can conclude that She Walks in Beauty
is a Romantic poem that has a lot of the characteristics of the movement:
strong emotion as a source of a aesthetic experience, inclination to talk about
nature and medieval features.
Bibliographical Sources
1. "She Walks in Beauty." Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. 19 Dec 2007, 18:02 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 Jan
2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=She_Walks_in_Beauty&oldid=178996529>.
2. Gamber, Garry.
""She Walks In Beauty," A Discussion of the Poem by Lord
Byron." EzineArticles
3. "She Walks
in Beauty." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 12 Nov 2007, 21:25
UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 28 Nov 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=She_Walks_in_Beauty&oldid=171044222>.
4. Pujals, Esteban.
Espronceda y Lord Byron.
Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1951.
5. " Hebrew Melodies" Universitat de València Press.
1996-2000.
6. Tom Mole,
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4781
7. "Romanticism." Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. 14 Jan 2008, 17:45 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 Jan
2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Romanticism&oldid=184290857>.
8. "Medieval literature." Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia. 28 Nov 2007, 14:52 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
14 Jan 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_literature&oldid=174377651>.