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 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,
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!
MEANING OF DIFFICULT WORDS
1.
Climes- (noun) climate
2.
Mellow- soft, sweet, and full-flavored from ripeness, as fruit.
Soft and rich, as sound, tones, color, or light.
3.
Gaudy- cheaply showy in a tasteless way; flashy.
4.
Raven- lustrous black
5.
Eloquent- having or exercising the power of fluent, forceful, andappropriate speech
POETIC/LITERARY DEVICES
1.
Personification
·
Smiles that win- decribes the
woman’s soft smiles
·
Heart whose love is innocent –
woman’s pure heart
·
Tender light- amplifies the
image of softness that the woman possesses
2.
Similes
·
like
the night
·
nameless
grace / which waves in every raven trees- the poet compares “grace”, the
quality of the woman, to an observable phenomenon “raven trees” and makes the
portray more clear.
3.
Alliteration
·
cloudless
climes
·
starry
skies
·
day
denies
·
serenely
sweet
STANZA BY STANZA ANALYSIS
FIRST STANZA: Describes the physical appearance of the woman. Byron
starts the poem with the phrase “She walks in beauty, like the night/ Of
cloudless climes and starry skies;.”(1-2) Here, the poet creates an image of a
dark, clear sky with twinkling stars, and make a contrast between brightness
and darkness. This contrast could mean diverse things, such as “black hair” and
“white skin”, or “deep, black eyes” and “clear, white parts of the eyes.” The
image created by this contrast represents the cloth the woman is wearing; a
black dress with sparkles on it. In the next line, “And all that’s best of dark
and bright/ Meet in her aspect and her eyes:,”(3-4) we see how the opposite
characteristics of darkness and brightness mentioned in previous lines reappear
to mingle and create a wonderful harmony. In the last two lines of this stanza,
we see another contrast in imagery. The darkness and brightness from lines
above have “mellowed”(5) to become a “tender light,”(5) and this gets
contrasted with the expression “gaudy day,”(6) which inheres a negative
connotation of excessiveness. Thus, the woman that the poet is praising is in
great balance. Opposites “meet” in the woman to create a calm, soft image.
SECOND STANZA: Continues to praise the woman’s
appearance, but starting from line 11, the poet extends this external beauty
onto the woman’s personality. In the phrase “Had half impaired the nameless
grace,”(8) the poet tells us that the woman’s face is in such a perfect portion
that just a slight change would damage it. From the expression “half impaired,”
we could once again draw out two significant meanings. First, it could mean
that although the balance is destroyed, the beauty will still be half marvelous
because it is only “half impaired.” Or, if we focus on the notion of
“imperfection” when something is in half, the poet might be emphasizing the
current, “greatly balanced” status of the woman’s appearance which should not
be destroyed. The expression “nameless grace”(8) is also significant. By adding
the word “nameless” in front of the word “grace,” the poet enlarged the woman’s
beauty and greatness, thereby suggesting it as something so priceless that
can’t be defined nor expressed as a name. We could also understand that the
woman has a black hair from the expression “Which waves in every raven
tress,.”(9) Compared with conventional qualities of “beauty” during the time
when Byron wrote this poem, “black hair” which this woman has is extraordinary.
This distinctiveness amplifies the woman’s beauty, as she distinguishes herself
from others. Lastly, in the last two lines, “Where thoughts serenely sweet
express/ How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.,”(11-12) we start to see how
the woman’s inner beauty is reflected in her appearance. “Dwelling-place,”(12)
which is where the mind and the spirit belong, is also sweet and pure. With
this perfect inner quality added to her external beauty, the woman becomes more
perfect as she possesses beauty inside out.
LAST STANZA: Talks both about the woman’s inner and outer
characteristics. Her cheek and her smiles are beautiful. In the phrases “days
in goodness spent,”(16) “mind at peace,”(17) and “heat whose love is
innocent,”(18) we understand that the woman’s inner thoughts are also as pure
and graceful just as her appearance. As in previous stanzas, he once again
shows the theme of this poem, which is the woman’s physical beauty along with
her internal beauty.
CRITICAL APPRECIATION
The poem is about
an unnamed woman. She’s really quite striking and the speaker compares her to
lots of beauty, “but also dark things like ‘nights’ and ‘starry skies’. The
second stanza continues to use the contrast between light and dark, day and
night to describe her beauty. We also learn that her face is really pure and
sweet. The third stanza wraps it all up. She’s not just beautiful; she’s good
and also innocent.
The overall tone of She Walks in Beauty is soft and calm,
quite different with the image we have about poet, Lord Byron. Perhaps this
extreme contrast between the lovely poem and the author who have lived a
dissipated lifestyle makes the poem touches us stronger. We could vividly feel
how strong Byron’s admiration of the woman was. Use of soft and simple
languages rather than heavy, intellectual words is also significant, as it
demonstrates the pure, easily noticeable beauty of the woman. The woman
portrayed in this poem must have been truly beautiful to catch Byron’s
attention at once, and make him write such a vivid poem.
READING MATERIAL
Themes:
1. Appearences
We know that appearances are going to be
important in "She Walks in Beauty" from line 1 – after all, the
fourth word of the poem is "beauty." The entire poem is one long
description of a woman's beauty.
2. Principles
We're talking
about the unnamed lady's principles here, not the speaker's. We're guessing –
partly based on the poem itself, and partly based on Byron's reputation – that,
given the opportunity, he'd happily seduce her. But this particular woman would
have none of that. We're told repeatedly that she's pure and innocent, and
that's part of why she's so gorgeous
3. Woman and femininity
The woman's beauty
is related to her movement from the beginning – part of what makes her
beautiful is her dynamism and life. She's not just a portrait on a wall; she's
a living, breathing, "walk[ing]" person. “or softly lightens o’er her face” Byron has
said that the woman's whole "aspect" is beautiful, but now he's
trying to put his finger on exactly what makes her facial expression so
gorgeous.
4. Awe and
amazement
Because of the way
the unnamed woman in "She Walks in Beauty" is described, the speaker
almost seems to be worshipping her. He idolizes her beauty and compares it to
things that are so vast and universal that her beauty seems almost
supernatural. The opening simile of the poem compares
the unnamed woman to vast and intangible things, like "night" and
"starry skies." Why can't he just compare her to a flower, or to
something that we can wrap our minds around more easily? The woman is "at
peace with all below." With everyone on earth? She has no outstanding
grudges or disagreements with anyone? This makes her seem almost saintly – no
wonder the speaker is in awe of her.
Byron wrote this poem about Mrs. Wilmot, his cousin Robert Wilmot’s
wife. It echoes Wordsworth’s earlier “The Solitary Reaper” (1807) in its
conceit: the speaker’s awe upon seeing a woman walking in her own aura of
beauty. While ostensibly about a specific woman, the poem extends to encompass
the unobtainable and ideal. The lady is not beautiful in herself, but she walks
in an aura of Beauty (Flesch 1). In contrast to popular conceptions, her beauty
is not easily described as brilliant or radiant, but it is also dark “like the
night” (line 1) However, “all that’s best of dark and bright” (line 3) meet in
her face and eyes, suggesting that while she walks in a dark beauty, she is
herself a brighter, more radiant beauty. To further convolute the image, the
woman is described as having “raven tress[es]” (black hair) (line 9),
connecting her to the darkness, while the “nameless grace” (line 8) “lightens”
her face—possibly a play on the word, meaning the grace alights on her face,
but also including the brighter aspect of lightening her countenance.
Indeed, the beauty of Wilmot is found largely in its balance of
opposites: the darkness she walks in (and her dark hair) counterpoise her fair
skin and the bright pureness of her soul. In this lady, the “tender light” is
“mellowed,” in contrast to the “gaudy day” which has only the glaring sun and
no shade to soften its radiance. Thus the lady’s simple, inner perfection
produces a beauty superior to nature itself.
This grace is “nameless” in that it is ineffable. It is a common idea to
say that there is no way for human word or verse to encompass it, so it must
remain nameless even as the speaker perceives it clearly. Prose cannot come
close to a description of this abstract beauty, so the speaker must attempt it
in verse.
These issues raise a concern that the woman seems so pure because she is
so simple; she wears her thoughts directly on her face, and she shows no
evidence of discrimination of better from worse. Her mind is “at peace with all
below” (line 17), and she loves innocently. If she is beautiful like the night,
perhaps her mind truly is like a sky without any clouds of trouble or
confusion. In contrast, she has been able to spend her days in “goodness,” the
tints in her face glowing like stars in the sky, small punctuations in a vast
emptiness above.
Some critics maintain, however, that the glimpse of Wilmot which
inspired this poem was afforded Byron at a funeral; thus the images of darkness
which surround the lady can be drawn from the mourning clothes she and those
around her wear. This beauty is “like the night” because this time of spiritual
darkness—mourning the passing of a loved one—does not detract from her beauty,
but instead accentuates it.
In any case, in this woman dark and light are reconciled. This
reconciliation is made possible by the main sources of the lady’s beauty: her
mind “at peace with all below” and her “heart whose love is innocent” (line
18). By possessing a genial mind and innocent heart, the lady can bring the
beauty of both darkness and light out and together without contradiction; her
purity softens the edges of the contrasts.
Byron eschews erotic or physical desire in this poem, preferring instead
to express the lady’s beauty without professing his own emotions. He restricts
his physical descriptions of her to her eyes, brow, hair, and smiles. Her
loveliness has to do with her innocence and her “days in goodness spent” (line
16), whether it results from her virtue or simply from the poet’s imagination
of that virtue. After all, if we bracket the likely autobiographical element of
the poem, we do not know whether the speaker has caught anything more than a
few moments’ glimpse of a beautiful woman walking by.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
