She Walks in Beauty - Lord Byron

2013/11/19

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

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