"She Walks in Beauty" by Lord Byron

• Lord Byron's 'She Walks in Beauty' is about a narrator who is in awe of the beauty and purity of a woman he has seen.
• CONTEXT AND MEANING

  • Although this seems like a love poem, the narrator never actually states that he loves the lady. Instead, the poem focusses on appearance.
  • The key themes of the poem are morality, desire, and nature.
  • The poem also deals with Victorian morality; the poet focusses on the woman's purity, something which was extremely important at the time.
  • The poem challenges cliches of love poetry- such as Byron choosing to compare the woman to the night rather than the more conventionally beautiful daytime.
• About the poet:

  • Lord Byron was a Romantic poet who had a scandalous and unconventional life.
  • He went to Harrow School and Cambridge University.
  • His poem ' Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' (about the travels and reflections of a young man who searches for distractions in foreign lands) was published in 1812, and Byron became famous overnight.
  • Feeling pressure from his debts and failed marriage, he left England in spring of 1816 and didn't return.
  • He died in Greece, and his body was brought back to England.
• AWE

  • The narrator is in awe of this woman.
  • He uses hyperbolic language to describe the woman's beauty. In the first line he uses a simile to compare her to the entire night sky- "Of cloudless climes and starry skies".
  • The huge scale of this comparison highlights that the narrator is completely overwhelmed by the woman he sees.
• ASSUMPTIONS

  • The woman in the poem remains silent. But as the poem progresses, the narrator focusses more on her inner beauty.
  • He describes her appearance as "eloquent", a word meaning well-spoken, even though we never hear the woman speak. At the end of the poem, the narrator declares the woman as having "a heart whose love is innocent".
  • The narrator is claiming by the end of the poem that the woman is beautiful because of her purity, but he is still making this judgement based on her beauty.
• FORM AND STRUCTURE

  • The poem features lots of enjambment and caesura (pauses in a line); "She walks in beauty. like the night/Of cloudless climes".
  • The enjambment disrupts the rhythm, and suggests that the narrator is overwhelmed by the woman and can barely express his feelings.
• Byron's narrator goes from thinking the woman is beautiful to thinking she is beautiful because she is pure. The poem explores how female sexual purity was highly valued in the 19th century (1800s).
• WORD CHOICE

  • The narrator focusses on the woman's physical appearance for the first half of the poem, but then shifts to imagining her "thoughts" and imagines that her smile speaks of "days in goodness spent".
  • This shift from the physical exterior to her inner beauty is not because the woman has done anything, but because the narrator wishes to imagine that she is both pure and beautiful- making her more worthy of his attention.
• SILENCE

  • The woman in the poem never speaks, or even seems to have seen the narrator.
  • This means that he can imagine whatever he wants about her and cannot be proved wrong, e.g. he imagines "where her thoughts serenely sweet express".
• FORM

  • The poem has a regular rhyme scheme of ABABAB which reflects the purity of the woman he is describing.
• "And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, so soft, so calm, yet eloquent"

  • Themes: femininity, morality.
  • Techniques used: Sibilance and caesura.
  • Sibilance creates a soft and sweet tone to reflect the beauty of the woman. The narrator thinks the woman is both beautiful and intelligent, this is shown by his use of the word "eloquent".
  • The narrator is making this judgement based only on the woman's appearance, which could be seen as shallow (not showing careful thought).
• Byron uses nature to describe the beauty of the woman, this is common in Romantic poetry.
• NATURE

  
  

  "Which heaven to gaudy day denies"

  • Gaudy means showy and bright. Byron is saying that the woman's beauty is more delicate and unusual because she is a combination of light and dark.
• NATURE- comparison to night

  • The narrator presents the woman as unusual beauty.
  • He compares her to the "starry skies" and "all that's best of dark and bright".
• NATURE- natural imagery: balance.

  • Byron uses natural imagery to convey the perfect balance of the woman's beauty- "One shade the more, one ray the less" would have lessened her beauty.
  • The narrator views the woman as a miracle of nature- even if just one small thing had been different, she would not be the perfect thing he sees before him.
• "Which waves in every raven tress,/Or softly lightens o'er her face;"

  • Techniques used: juxtaposition
  • Byron juxtaposes her dark hair with her pale face. Byron presents light "softly" touching her, suggesting even nature wants to protect her beauty.
  • Byron also suggests that without the light on her face, the darkness of the woman's hair wouldn't be balanced.
• KEY QUOTATIONS:

  
  

  "She walks in beauty, like the night/ Of cloudless climes and starry skies"

  • Byron compares the woman to the night sky, which is an unconventional choice as daylight is considered more traditionally beautiful.
• KEY QUOTATIONS:

  
  

  "And on that cheek, and o'er that brow/ So soft, so calm, yet eloquent."

  • He describes the woman's cheek as "eloquent" which is unusual because it is normally a term used to describe speech. But as he can only judge her on her appearance, he can only call her cheek eloquent.
• KEY QUOTATIONS:

  "Where thoughts serenely sweet express,/ How pure, how dear their dwelling place."

  • In this line, Byron imagines that the "dwelling place" ( the mind) of the woman, is pure. He assumes that the woman is both beautifully and morally pure.