Book She Walks in Beauty is one of the most famous works of poet Lord Byron (George Gordon) in the year June 12th, 1814.
Lord Bryon (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) is a renown poet and politician of the Romantic Movement. Being born in England, he had a controversial life which most of them were based on his love life. For instance, he is accessed of being a bisexual with multiple partners, and there is a rumor of him being in a sexual relationship with his step-sister, Augusta. Such controversies led to his divorce in 1815, from where he moved to Greece. While in Greece, Lord Bryon fought for the independence of Greeks from turkey.
He contacted fever while there and succumbed to the illness at the age of 36. Despite his controversies, he left a legacy of being a fighter and a poet, upon which one of his poems, She Walks in Beauty we discuss. The three-stanza poem describes the beauty of someone the persona knows. The subject of the poem is a mysterious person who has not only the beauty but a different one which she compares tonight.
Therefore, this poem involves contrasting the light and the dark side of someone that the persona says to be a stunning beauty. The subject of the poem She Walks in Beauty is a female of outstanding beauty who the persona admires from a distance. The speaker, who is the admirer, is probably speaking to his peers explaining to them how he has seen a beautiful girl. However, the poem is not a love poem for the speaker does not say anything to do with love. He just admires and appreciates the beauty of the subject. The subject remains oblivious to the fact that there is someone who admires her beauty.
In the first stanza, the speaker compares her beauty to a starry night, a contrast since it is expected to be compared to probably a daylight. In the second stanza, the speaker goes further to describe the inner beauty of the subject where he says that her external beauty is an expression of what is inside her heart or her brain. In the third stanza, the speaker tells how the subject is not only beautiful, but she is also good and innocent.
The poet has made a good use of poetic devices in the poem. For example, “She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies” (lines 1 and 2), the poet has used simile to compare the subject’s beauty and nature. The same lines bring about imagery as the reader imagines a starry night and compares it to the beauty of the subject.
Personification is also used, like, “A heart whose love is innocent!” (Line 18), where love is given the human character of being innocent. The poem, therefore, brings out the excitement mood, as the persona is just happy throughout the poem for having found a girl whom she praises her beauty.
The poem leaves the audience with excited faces completely moved by the beauty of the subject. At the end of it, the audience has no choice but to accept that the girl is beautiful and the persona is right to admire her. The phrases like “The smiles that win, the tints that glow” in line 15 are very catching that they keep on replaying in the audience heads.
The poem She Walks in Beauty is the poet’s real description of a beauty. The persona tries to make the beauty real by the use of contrast, where even though he sees fewer imperfections in the subject, “One shade the more, one ray the less” (line 13) shows that even though her beauty is exceptional, she is human too.
