Analysis of Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty”
Lord George Gordon Byron was most notorious for his love affairs within his family and with Mediterranean boys. Since he had problems such as incest and homosexuality, he did not mind writing about his love for his cousin in “She Walks in Beauty”. Byron wrote the poem after he left his wife and England forever. Byron made his own trend of personality, the idea of the ‘Byronic Hero’. “Byron’s influence on European poetry, music, novels, operas, and paintings have been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries” (Dick, 54). Overall, the study focuses on the life of Lord George Gordon Byron, imagery, and about the lyrics of
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“This attitude of self-reliance is a distinguishing characteristic of both Lord Byron and his literary figures” (Parker, 88).
“She Walks in Beauty” starts off from a traditional picture of a lady as fair and bright. It links with the brightness of daylight, in its comparison of the mistress to the night. “The distinctive quality of the poem derives not from any departure from the norm but from a graceful elaboration of the conventions of compliment” (Seifter, 82). Avoiding unoriginal or obvious similies, Byron uses metaphors which expresses the idea of a quiet and slight glow. “The mistress like the night/ Of cloudless climes and starry skies” (ll 1-2), not pitch dark but glimmering with a diffused light” (Seifter, 82). She is like a portrait in “chiaroscuro”, her face is copied through an interaction of light and shadow.
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Her hazy beauty makes daylight seem bright. “Imagery drawn from painting continues as a poet discusses the shades, rays, and tints that compose the mistress’s particular radiance” (Seifter, 82). The flowing lines, rhymes, and imagery of light and dark give the impression of elegant and simple compliment.
The poem starts off brilliantly. “The first four lines are beautifully phrased, and the opening couplet in particular has ingrained itself in the collective consciousness” (Blair, 1). “She walks in beauty, like the night/ Of cloudless climes and starry skies;/ And all
BibliographyAsbee, S. (2006) Approaching Poetry, Milton Keynes, The Open UniversityReid, N. (2006) Coleridge, Form and Symbol, Or the Ascertaining Vision, Aldershot, Ashgate PublishingWellek, R. (1963) The Concept of Romanticism in literary historyin Bygrave, S (2006) Romantic Writings London, The Open UniversityZuk, E. Coleridges Blank Verse [online], http://www.expansivepoetryonline.com/journal/cult072004.html (Accessed 28th April 2008)
“Beauty” by Tony Hoagland was written in 1998. In this poem, Hoagland expresses his feelings on how women care too much about physical appearances. Throughout his poem he tells the story through the eyes of a brother of a girl who learns to love herself for who she is. Hoagland’s poem stresses the importance that beauty goes deeper than the surface. Throughout his poem, Tony Hoagland uses many literary devices to perfect his poem. These devices include the message, tone, imagery, figures of speech, and personification.
Lord Byron, a romantic author from the 18th century was a man who was considered as a “player”, a man who was always with multiple women. In his lifetime Byron wrote many stories, three of those stories were, She Walks In Beauty, Apostrophe To The Ocean, and Don Juan. In those three stories Lord Byron indicates very important messages for each.
There were a few interesting lines in the poem that were particularly well written. When the mother is denying her kid the right to march, she says “For I fear
Born in 1788, George Gordon Byron, commonly known as Lord Byron, was an English poet and one of the most famous poets of the romantic era. Romanticism was one of the most influential poetic movements in which brought Lord Byron into the literary forefront. Although he has many famous literary works, She Walks in Beauty is one of his most favourable poems. The poem was inspired by a woman wearing a mourningful dress whilst at a ball. Love is the overarching theme, focusing mainly on captivating love. This is seen by the overwhelming sense of his attention that is captivated by her and the fact that the woman seems unobtainable. Through his work, Lord Byron captured the reader's attention through the way he used literary devices and the way he represented different gender representations through the nature of love.
The second stanza of Lord Byron's poem focuses on the woman's perfect face. The beautiful shades and rays of the womans complexion make her a “nameless grace” (2, 2). This conveys the idea that her inner beauty is reflected in her outer beauty in the sense that she is pure and innocent on the inside so she radiates that beauty on the outside. This stanza reveals her serene thoughts:
In Letters to a Young Poet, “Letter One” has very similar ideas and thoughts to the excerpts from Black Swan Green, “Hangman” and “Solarium”. In “Letter One” by Rainer Rilke, the central idea is that beauty is already in poetry but the author inputs his or her own flare to the already beautiful work. Rilke also explains that criticism does not make the rough edges round, because those rough edges make the piece literature unique. The ideas in “Hangman” and “Solarium” are similar but different. David Mitchell’s version of beauty in poetry is that the words the author chooses add beauty, but if all the words are beautiful that makes the beauty normal. In “Letter One”, “Solarium” and “Hangman”, there are similar yet different central ideas about beauty and its impact in poetry.
Byron's diction in this poem is quite metaphorical. "She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies" (lines 1-2 Norton 556). His use of imagery has allowed us to visualize an aura that surrounds this woman. The imagery he uses also brings together two opposing forces, darkness and light which works quite well together as one united force. We can visualize a dark sky filled bright stars, a perfect picture for an ideal evening, which can be compared to his picture of a perfect woman.
he joined the armed forces and wrote several of his lesser known poems. They all included a romantic theme which could be a result of being isolated from the opposite sex. The general subject or goal of the Romantic era was to compare the beauty of nature to an everyday object or person and to create a snapshot of the scene being described. “[Romanticism] Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature, prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication, and contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development,” (Langley 2-5) The importance of the comparison between the river is huge in this poem because the way the river is described as a “bright, clear flow”. It shows that this river in particular is special. The majority of rivers are muddy and murky which suggests that the maiden has a sense of purity about her.
The poem ?She Walks in Beauty? came by as an inspiration to the author. This
When reading this poem you will get a very vivid image of a warm summer morning because of the words "sunny, summer and dried the dew." A girl is in a field running carelessly with a silk dress on that sways as the breeze blows. She is tall and slender as a "cedar pole." Who has a very carefree spirit is "strictly held by none". A girl who is completely at peace because everything in her life is going well "by countless silken ties of love and thought to everything on earth the compass round."
Though not named, the writer, Byron seeks to captivate the essence of a mysterious woman’s beauty through his almost fairy-tale description of her. Written in the 1700s at a time when women were expected to be delicate and assume the role of puppets for their puppeteer men, the woman was juxtaposed between conventional and unconventional norms of beauty. The first line is one such example of him describing her beauty in unconventional terms. ‘She walks in beauty, like the night’ Night is not normally described as being beautiful; writers usually attribute adjectives such as scary, dark, lonely and cold to night. Hence, from the beginning, Byron grabbed the reader’s attention by letting his audience know that this beauty was not just the usual
She Walks in Beauty is a poem by Lord Byron. Byron was an English poet who spearheaded the second generation of Romantic Poets. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest English poets. This
Never in my entire life have I heard of this poem. It came to my attention the first time in class. After researching on the Internet about the author, who is known as Lord Byron, an English poet from the romantic period. The poem is a description of a beautiful woman, whom Byron acquainted, at a ball while meeting his cousin by marriage. Her unusual beauty struck Byron and the poem was written the morning after. It is said that “She walks in beauty” is one of Byron’s most famous piece.
and includes some of the finest idyllic poetry in the language. He is one of