she walks in beauty
George Gordon Noel Byron's poem titled, "She Walks in Beauty," plainly put, is a love poem about a beautiful woman and all of her features. The poem follows a basic iambic tetrameter with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable that allows for a rhythm to be set by the reader and can be clearly seen when one looks at a line:She walks / in beau / ty like / the night. T.S. Eliot, an American poet criticizes Byron's work by stating the poem, "needs to be read very rapidly because if one slows down the poetry vanishes and the rhyme is forced" (Eliot 224). With this rhythm the reader can, however, look deeper into the contents of Byron's poem and discover a battle of two forces. The two forces involved in Byron's poem are the darkness and light- at work in the woman's beauty, and also the two areas of her beauty-the internal and the external. The poem appears to be about a lover, but in fact was written about "Byron's cousin, Anne Wilmot, whom he met at a party in a mourning dress of spangled black" (Leung 312). This fact, the black dress that was brightened with spangles, helps the reader to understand the origin of the poem. Byron portrays this, the mixing of the darkness and the lig
In the third and final stanza, Byron concludes the poem with three lines a physical description that lead to the final three lines the woman's moral characterization. The soft cheeks, the winning smile, the tints in the skin eloquently express not only physical beauty, but they also attest to her morality. The physical beauty, the speaker can conclude, reflects days spent doing well, a mind at peace, and "a heart whose love is innocent!" Although this poem begins with the image of a woman walking, there are no images given by Byron of her legs or arms or feet; this is a head poem, confined to hair, eyes, face, cheeks, and brows. The conclusion to the second stanza contains insight into "the dwelling place" of the woman's thoughts, creating an insight into her mind by using alliteration. The repetition of the "s" sounds is soothing in the phrase "serenely sweet express," because "Byron is referring to her thoughts, and her thoughts are serene and pure"(25). Reprinted as "Byron, "in Essays in Criticism, Dutton, 1964, pp. 312-30.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 982
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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