She Walks in Beauty

BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON)

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all thats 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 oer her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and oer 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!

Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Byron was the ideal of the Romantic poet, gaining notoriety for his scandalous private
life and being described by one contemporary as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'.
George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron, was born on 22 January 1788 in London. His
father died when he was three, with the result that he inherited his title from his great
uncle in 1798.
Byron spent his early years in Aberdeen, and was educated at Harrow School and
Cambridge University. In 1809, he left for a two-year tour of a number of Mediterranean
countries. He returned to England in 1811, and in 1812 the first two cantos of 'Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage' were published. Byron became famous overnight.
In 1814, Byron's half-sister Augusta gave birth to a daughter, almost certainly Byron's.
The following year Byron married Annabella Milbanke, with whom he had a daughter, his
only legitimate child. The couple separated in 1816.

Facing mounting pressure as a result of his failed marriage, scandalous affairs and huge
debts, Byron left England in April 1816 and never returned. He spent the summer of
1816 at Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary and Mary's half sister
Claire Clairmont, with whom Byron had a daughter.
Byron travelled on to Italy, where he was to live for more than six years. In 1819, while
staying in Venice, he began an affair with Teresa Guiccioli, the wife of an Italian
nobleman. It was in this period that Byron wrote some of his most famous works,
including 'Don Juan' (1819-1824).
In July 1823, Byron left Italy to join the Greek insurgents who were fighting a war of
independence against the Ottoman Empire. On 19 April 1824 he died from fever at
Missolonghi, in modern day Greece. His death was mourned throughout Britain. His body
was brought back to England and buried at his ancestral home in Nottinghamshire.

Lord Byron's Poems Study Guide

George Gordon, Lord Byron, began writing poetry in his youth. He
published his first book of verse, Fugitive Pieces, at age 18, and he
continued to write and publish poetry until his untimely death at 36.
Although a lifelong poet, Byron did not consider poetry his primary
vocation; he saw himself as a man destined to achieve greatness,
primarily through helping end the oppression of various peoples, including
the Spanish and especially the Greeks.
Byron's poetry is characterized by the experimentation and focus on
emotion common among Romantic poets. He often tempers his avantgarde selection of subjects with poetic forms which hark back to older
days, such as heroic verse, Spenserian stanzas, and a rigid rhyme scheme
to invoke the classical world he loved.
Byron's poetry also is intensely personal, usually filled with
autobiographical references. This self-portrait is often coupled with a
sense of the larger world's political, moral, historical, or even natural
situation. Thus, Byron makes his internal journey either a reflection of or a
cause for the external world's circumstances.
Byron was concerned not only with the traditions of poetry, but also with
his legacy in the poetic world. This helps explain his extensive selfreference in his works. The reader can develop some understanding of
Byron's self-concept by looking at his protagonists, who usually are
outcasts (through the work of others or by self-imposed exile) who do not
fit into societal norms, but who simultaneously are heroic in nature and
"larger than life." Through his poetry, Byron sought to create a persona

who possessed qualities he may have thought the real-world George

Gordon lacked.

Lord Byron's Poems Summary and Analysis

of "She Walks in Beauty, Like the Night"
The poet describes a woman who walks in beauty, like the night/Of
cloudless climes and starry skies (lines 1-2). Immediately the light of
stars and the shadow of night are brought forth as contrasts,
foreshadowing the further contrasts the poet notices regarding this
beautiful woman. Seeing her eyes, he declares that in her face all thats
best of dark and bright are joined. Her beauty is contrasted to the
gaudy daylight.
In the second stanza, the poet reflects on the balance in the womans
beauty: One shade the more, one ray the less (line 7) would hinder the
nameless grace which surrounds her. He then turns to her inner life,
seeing her external beauty as an expression of thoughts that dwell in a
place (perhaps her mind, or her beautiful head and face) both pure and
dear (line 18).
The final stanza returns to her face, but again sees the silent expression of
peace and calm in her cheek, brow, and smiles. Her pleasant facial
expressions eloquently but innocently express her inner goodness and
peacefulness.

Analysis
She Walks in Beauty is written in iambic tetrameter, a meter commonly
found in hymns and associated with sincerity and simplicity (Moran 2).
Byrons chosen meter conveys to the reader both his purity of intent
(there is but one subject for this poem, the ladys virtuous beauty) and a
poetic parallel to his subject (the ladys beauty arises from her purity or
simplicity of nature). It is an astonishingly chaste poem given its authors
reputation for licentiousness, lust, and debauchery.
Byron wrote this poem about Mrs. Wilmot, his cousin Robert Wilmots wife.
It echoes Wordsworths earlier The Solitary Reaper (1807) in its conceit:
the speakers 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 thats 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 facepossibly 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 ladys 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 darknessmourning the passing of a loved onedoes 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 ladys 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 ladys 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 poets 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.

Quotes:

All thats best of dark and bright <BR> Meet in her aspect
and her eyes:
"She Walks in Beauty"
The speaker points out the main paradox of his subjects beauty in these
two lines. She is dark-haired, and something about her beauty reminds
him of a cloudless night, yet her skin is pure white, as is her soul. He
does not explain how she manages to reconcile these two seemingly
contradictory conceptsshe simply keeps them together, perhaps
because she is so beautiful in her soul. At the same time, she only
maintains what is "best" of each concept; the right balance for her is a
complex mix, without too much or too little of either.

The progression of stanzas in "She Walks in Beauty" tell of various aspects

of the beauty of a woman. The first stanza compares the woman to the
beauty of the night
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all thats best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light 5
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
Describing her as walking "in beauty" makes her beauty less personal and
more ethereal. Since she is compared to something as cosmic as "night of
cloudless climes and starry skies" -- that is, a clear night lit brightly by stars
-- the suggestion is not just of personal beauty, but of a celestial, almost
spiritual quality. It is not simply that she is dark-haired, with bright eyes

(like the dark sky of night, and bright stars,) but "all that's best of dark and
bright" are joined in her aspect (looks) and her eyes. The picture, created
in just these first six lines, is of a woman who is not only blessed with
physical beauty, but has a certain quality of harmonious nature about her
which increases her attractiveness. A phrase so general as "all that's best
of dark and bright" brings to mind the beauty of all things dark and things
shining. To be possessed of the best qualities of beauty of such a large
class of things is substantial indeed.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens oer her face; 10
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear, their dwelling-place.
In this stanza, Byron talks about how not only is the subject of the poem
beautiful, but she has a perfect balance to her beauty. "One shade the
more, one ray the less" refers back to the first stanza's mention of dark and
bright. She has the right amount of "shade" (darkness) and "rays"
(brightness) balanced in the look of her face. But for the first time Byron
now discusses her thoughts illuminating her beauty. "Where thoughts
serenely sweet express" means that the thoughts of her mind are so sweet
that they make her countenance so. The thoughts, he is saying, express
that their "dwelling place" i.e. -- her head, is pure and dear. This is
a markedly different kind of personification, in which a person's thoughts
are being said to have an expression about the body they inhabit.
And on that cheek, and oer that brow,
So soft, so calm, so 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!

15

Byron is still talking about her looks, but in this stanza he is focusing on
what her looks say about her soul. The first four lines are telling of her
face, which has "smiles that win, the tints that glow" but everything is meant
to show that her days are "in goodness spent". What has started out as a
poem about how a woman looks has come to be about how her looks
illuminate what kind of person she is. The fact that she looks a certain way
means, to Byron, that she is good and kind and has a "heart whose love is
innocent". Byron feels so strongly about this last line that he adds an
exclamation point. The effect is that while the poem may have seemed to
be one about superficial beauty, what the poet really admires is the
subject's goodness.