She Walks in Beauty by George Gordon - Essay Example

“She walks in beauty” is an all-time poem written by George Gordon, Lord Byron (rpt. James P. Place, Introduction to literature: A reader for freshman composition II, 1st ed. [Boston: Pearson, 2011] P.380) that has transcended over time in decades, and continued being enjoyed to date. This poetry was published in 1815, which is within the period notably referred to in the literature as “the romantic era”. Claims have it that the poem was about Lady Wilmot Horton, Whom Bryon found in a mourning situation and fell in love with instantly. The poem describes the subject lady, her dress, her appearance, and the attractiveness she held to Bryon.

The poem is patterned in three stanzas structure, having an identical rhyme scheme (ababab cdcdcd effect). The same basic meter (iambic tetrameter) is maintained throughout the poem.

The timing is on a cloudless night, which gives him the chance to observe the lady without being noticed. Probably, he was imagining how the lady’s beauty matched the starry skies. Even in the darkness, the author imagined the lady to appear bright and was mesmerized by the brightness of her eyes. Perhaps, the dressing of the lady adorned her with its glittering. The poem is all about beauty which possessed the lady of the night. Moreover, the author imagined that the lady was surrounded by a beauty like an aura. The Lady was not only beautiful physically, but the stanza introduces the inner beauty of the lady as she was tender.

The second stanza introduces some contrast between darkness and the light, and that the lady was fair in the dark, but not so fair in the light. The author expresses his sentiments by use of words to claim that her graceful and beauty were nameless, which could be implying that he could not quite point out what made her so graceful. “Every raven tress” could be something to do with her beautiful hair, which “lightens her face”.  The woman’s facial expression revealed the sweet serenity of her thoughts. The speaker is deep in imagination that the sweet expression of the lady reflected her state of mind “dwelling place”. The contrast between the inner thoughts and outer expression is developed over and over as “sweetness” and “pure”, which all summed up as valuable “dear”.

The smiles and tints (blushes) that “glow” on the lady’s cheek and brow (poetic term for forehead) are calm and serene. This could imply that the woman was quiet and elegant, yet her smiles and blushes were eloquent. The writer was strongly attracted by the expressive smiles and blushes. Byron seems to suggest that the smiles expressed all the time that the lady spent doing good acts. Because the lady was not just pretty-faced but was equally kind and good, she managed to appear notably “calm” with serenity around other people (“all below”). Finally, the love of the lady was innocent, which could mean that she had not fallen in love yet. It could as well mean that she was in platonic love.

The writer of the poem utilized plenty of figurative speech to express the theme of romance. The title of the poem presents some figurative as the term “walks” could imply advancement both in space and in time. In other words, the beauty evidenced in the lady was not just for the particular period that the writer noticed her, but it could mean that beauty possessed her. Similarly, by introducing the aspect of light and dark or shade, the writer creates some contrasts. He figuratively reflects on his thinking about the woman. From the outside, she was innocent, but there were possibilities that she was not so smart in character.  Figurative language is used to contrast between two truths, the physical and the psychological worlds, experienced and innocent as well as the mind and heart.

Born in London in 1788, George Gordon was a child of a noble family in Scot. His father was John Bryon and his mother was Catherine. He was born with a malformed leg and suffered from it his life through. Gordon’s father who had married his mother out of her fortune squandered all the money and fled to French where it is claimed he committed suicide in 1791. Byron and his mother moved to Aberdeen at a young age, where he grew up. In 1798, Byron’s great-uncle died and Byron inherited the ancestral home after becoming the sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale. He started schooling in Arberdeen at age ten but later moved to Cambridge. At Cambridge, he published his first poems, which did not receive good reviews. He continued with writing and in 1808, he traveled a lot within Europe. He had the reputation of the Ladies’ guy, a character that led to his separation from the wife he had married in 1815. He later died in 1824 of fever, in the fight for the Greek war against the Turks.