SHE WALKS IN
BEAUTY
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1 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 the tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
She walks in beauty--like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry
skies,
One ray the more, one shade the less
10 Had half impaired 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.
15 She walks in beauty--like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry
skies,
And on that cheek and o'er
that brow
So soft, so calm yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints
that glow
20 But tell of
days in goodness spent
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
She walks in beauty--like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry
skies,
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INTRODUCTION
LORD BYRON
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an
Anglo-Scottish poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Among Lord Byron's
best-known works are the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don
Juan. The latter remained incomplete on his death. He was regarded as one
of the greatest European poets and remains widely read.
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 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 travelled
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_byron
She Walks in Beauty is a poem written in 1814 by Lord Byron. 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.
Byron is said to have written the poem after meeting
his cousin Lady Anne Wilmot Horton in black mourning clothes, which, when
combined with her pale skin and “raven tresses”, reminded him of stars and the
night. The poem claims this lovely outer appearance as a sign of her inner
beauty and purity. This was a popular theme of Renaissance and Medieval poetry.
This poem is not necessarily a love poem, but more of
a celebration of the subject’s beauty. Some critics have said that the author
fell passionately in love with his cousin and wrote this poem for her but no
where in the poem does it mention or allude to love. He is merely commenting on
her beauty.
However, this poem is in no discernible “greater”
rhyming structure, but every other line does rhyme. It focuses on enjambment to
make its point.
The poem was written shortly before Lord Byron’s
marriage to Anna Milbanke and published shortly after the marriage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_walks_in_beauty
Byron was most notorious for his love affairs within his
family and with Mediterranean boys. Since he had problems such as incest and
homosexuality, he did not mind writing about his love for his cousin in the
poem ‘She walks in Beauty’. He wrote the poem after he left his wife an England
forever. Byron’s influences on European poetry, music, novels, operas, and
paintings have been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral
grounds by his contemporaries (Dick, 54). Lord Byron was an English Romantic
poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of
Europe.
ANALYSIS
There is an assonance rhyme in all the poem, in the
first stanza the rime words ‘night, skies, bright, eyes....’ so the whole
stanza rimes ‘ababab’, the same occurs in the second and third stanzas ‘less,
tress, express,... grace, face, place’, ‘brow, glow, below...
eloquent, spent,
innocent’. The poem also has
a refrain that appears at the end of each stanza, it is the two first verses ‘she
walks in beauty—like the night / of cloudless climes and starry skies’, that
make the poem like a song or something like that, and remind the reader the
climax or the theme of the whole poem, which is the perfect beauty for the
author’s point of view.
The power of emotion is evident in Lord Byron’s poems.
It can be possible that light can be emitted through the darkness of night.
The woman who appears in the poem is a female who the
author encountered. This encounter leads him to visualize a great distinct
physical image of her so he began to speak of this phenomenal attractiveness. A
special quality in her was being able to be identified with the heaven.
Beautiful like the stars and clearly visible such as cloudless night.
The poem speaks through the usage of imagery; it is
rhythmic with meaningful tones. Especially the female in this poem is evaluated
in terms of the physical world.
Byron’s diction in this poem is quite metaphorical.
“She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies”
(lines 1.2). His use of imagery has allowed us to visualize an atmosphere or
environment that surrounds this woman (his cousin). The imagery he uses also
brings together tow opposing things, darkness and light which works well
together as one united thing. We can visualize a dark sky filled bright stars,
a perfect picture for an ideal evening that can be compared to his picture or
image of a perfect woman. This woman, like the night, has opposite features
within her both internal and external “all that’s best of dark and bright /
meet in her aspect and her eyes” (lines 3-4).
As I have already mentioned before, the woman combines
opposites in perfect proportions in her looks and in her personality. Whether
it is a true declaration of love or a statement of admiration of her perfect
beauty and kindness is left to the reader, since it has known that this poem
was about an specific and real woman, Mrs. Wilmot (Byron’s cousin), and that
fact makes the poem real and closer to the reader, moreover it can impress us
more than other poems.
The poem opens with a line that does not have
punctuation (enjambment); it runs over to the next. Not only has this but the
next line had a different kind of meter. Poets use this mechanism together with
enjambment to attract attention to certain words. In the forth line, the word
‘meet’ is emphasized. It is an important word in the poem because it is the
premise of the entire poem. Just as enjambment and a change in meter are joined
as mechanism in this poem, the unlikely pair of darkness and light meet in this
woman. As we will see darkness and light within the beauty will be present
throughout the poem.
The author describes a night, associated of course
with darkness, with bright stars, they are the light, and he compares this
woman to that night. She brings together these opposites in her beauty and
creates a “tender light” (line 5). Not a light like the daytime, since he
describes that as gaudy, but a light that “heaven” does not even honour the
daytime with. Byron describes light and
dark in lots of elements of her appearance as in: “tender light, one ray, one
shade, raven stress, softly lightens o’er her face....”
Maybe darkness and lightness would not be in the right
proportions “one ray the more, one shade the less” (line 9), so her beauty
would not be completely ruined as you might expect. He says that she would only
be “half impaired” (line 10), and thus still half magnificent, half perfect.
So the first stanza describes her aspect, at the first
sight, especially the face. The second stanza describes the whole person, her
appearance, saying that she is so beauty nearly perfect, but not the perfection
because she is a human being. And the third stanza talks about the beauty of
her personality, her impact on the poet’s eyes and mind.
The author makes use of alliteration, the repeating of
the first letter of a word to get an easy-reading effect, as we can see in “of cloudless climes and starry
skies”.
In the last stanza we can see the author mentions the
physical beauty and the personality of this woman. Her thoughts are serene and
sweet; she is pure and dear. Her soft, calm glow reflects a life of peace and
goodness. This is a repetition, an emphasis, of the theme that the lady’s
physical beauty is a reflection of her inner beauty.
COMPARISON
Click on the image below to enlarge
Botticelli’s
Venus can help us to understand the poem. It’s clear from the title of the
painting that it represents the birth of the goddess Venus. We notice that
Venus, in the center of the painting, is full of bright and light, and she is
surrounding by the nature, the angels; and colours
are clearer in her and lighter than in the other characters on the painting.
So, as Byron’s woman and Botticelli’s one, they are both describing the beauty
of a woman, the near perfection in beauty, and also they used the opposites of
darkness and light in their works.
The
tenderness that this Venus inspires us like the woman in Byron’s poem, we can
imagine that his cousin could be like the ‘glorify Venus’.
PERSONAL OPINION
I admire
the skill of Byron to create poems like this one. I have not read anything
written by him before, and I think he achieved the way to describe beauty in
this poem. The poem is not long or difficult to read and understand, but even so,
it is so tender, pure … and it has the power to make the reader imagines how
beauty was this woman, and how perfect was the moment he encountered her.
The power
of this poem can be synthesize
by the very beginning of it “she walks in beauty like the night, with cloudless
climes and starry skies”, because since these lines you can imagine how intense,
clear and perfect is going to be this poem.
To conclude,
I recommend everybody to read it and enjoy with the solemn and lovely lines of
Byron’s poems.
Interesting information:
Click on the image below to enlarge.
http://www.australiancomposers.com.au/sheet_music/shewalksf.gif
Bibliography and sources:
·
Poetas
Romanticos Ingleses: Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth. By Jose
María Valverde & Leopoldo Panero.
·
Romantic
Writings by Stephen Bygrave
·
http://ezinearticles.com/?Lord-Byrons-She-Walks-in-Beauty&id=40911
·
http://uvpress.uv.es/poesia/hebrew_melodies.html#1
·
http://www.cecilw.com/images/WalterCrane2.jpg
·
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_byron
·
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_walks_in_beauty
·
Romanticism:
a critical reader by Duncan Wu.
·
English
romantic poets. Modern essays in criticism. By M. H. Abrams.
·
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/365.html
·
http://www.australiancomposers.com.au/sheet_music/shewalksf.gif
·
www.dim.uchile.cl/~anmoreir/escritos/byron.html
·
http://www.online-literature.com/byron/