George Gordon, Lord Byron

I really enjoyed reading Byron’s “She walks in beauty.” He paints an image of a woman that he sees as being perfect from the inside out. The poem consists of contrasting images of darkness and light that coexist together in the woman. Byron describes her to be “like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies” (ln1-2). At first she is given a dark image and compared to the night, but then her night sky is “starry” which gives images of both light and dark together. He then goes on to say in lines 3-4, “all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.” In these lines, he is saying that everything perfect in all that is dark and bright, which can really be interpreted as anything really, you can find in her and in her eyes. These two extremities of light that he sees in her form“tender light” in the speaker’s eyes.

In the second stanza, her perfection to the speaker is mentioned again in line 7 through his use of light and dark images. He mentions that, “one shade the more, one ray the less, has half impair’d the nameless grace.” In his eyes, if she was any different, than her beauty and her magnificence would be cut in half. Her combination of light and darkness is just right to illuminate her perfection. The poem continues to describe the woman’s darkened hair against her lightened skin with another image of light and dark together. At the end of the second stanza the speaker really begins to describe the beauty of the woman’s mind and soul. Using a soothing repetitive ‘s’ sound, he states, “Where thoughts serenely sweet express how pure, how dear their dwelling place.” The purity of the woman’s mind and her inner beauty is what makes the woman so physically beautiful in this poem. Her perfection is not just her physical appearance, but her as a whole, is perfect in every way.

The third stanza continues to awe in the woman’s inner beauty. First, the speaker describes her in physical ways describing her cheeks and brows as “soft,” “calm,” and “eloquent.” He uses this to express that her outer beauty has been caused by things such as “days in goodness spent,” “a mind in peace” and “a heart whose love is innocent.” The cause of her beauty can be linked to what goes on inside of her mind and spirit.

The poem made me think of a pure love someone must have for another person. The poem was fittingly a beautiful poem about a beautiful woman. The woman described in the poem had a true beauty that many never see. The beauty of the woman started inside her and spread outside of her to her physical appearance. In other words, she was only beautiful on the outside because she began with such a beautiful soul and mind.