19th Century Beauty

In addition to reading many well-known British novels this semester, my class is also analyzing poetry written by a number of distinguished British poets.  My favorite thus far has been Lord Byron, the early nineteenth-century Romantic poet.  The poem I have analyzed, “She Walks in Beauty,” is perhaps his most famous poem.  It may only be three stanzas long, but great meaning can be drawn from it by studying the rhyme scheme and the following literary devices: alliteration, consonance, and assonance.

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!
     

The first observation to make is the rhyme scheme, ABABAB.  This particular poem is an iambic tetrameter, which means it has four sets of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM).  The following is an example of this style: “She walks in beauty, like the night.”  The only line that does not fit this pattern is line four: “Meet in her aspect and her eyes.”  This line starts with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, making it a metrical inversion because it reverses the usual pattern of the poem.  Our attention is naturally drawn here because it sounds different from the previous lines.  The literary devices used in this poem give it a sense of musicality, which in itself is beautiful.

The tone of this poem is one of admiration.  The speaker never stops telling the audience how beautiful this woman is, inside and out.  He begins with a simile comparing her beauty to the night, which is unusual because night is typically seen as dark and eerie.  This comparison is a contrast to William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.”  Byron reverses Shakespeare’s simile by stating that her beauty is like the night.  In the second stanza, he describes how the woman’s beauty is a contrast between light and dark. The woman has dark (raven) hair, which offers a contrast to her fair complexion.  He even goes as far to say how pure her mind is in line twelve.  The speaker makes it apparent to the audience throughout the poem, that he thinks this woman is truly beautiful, yet he concludes the poem by stating that her love is only innocent, although he seems to hope it could be something more.