“She Walks in Beauty” has been composed by Lord George Gordon Byron and it is a lyric poem. The essential topic of the poem is the amazing exterior and interior attractiveness of a young woman. The poem was published in his collection called the “Hebrew Melodies”. While the 1st stanza of the poem praises the physical appearance of the woman, the 2nd and 3rd stanzas admire both the spiritual and physical appearance, i.e. the intellectual beauty, of the woman. The poem has 3 stanzas, each having 6 lines. It has a constant rhyme scheme that of ABABAB and all of the ending rhymes are grammatically masculine. The dominant meter of this poem is iambic tetrameter, as evident in,
“She walks | in beau- | ty, like | the night
Of cloud- | less climes | and star- | ry skies;”
Only one line of the poem is not in iambic tetrameter since it has 9 syllables instead of 8,
“Which hea- | ven to | gau – dy | day de- | nies.
Since the above 1st and 2nd lines of the poem contain enjambment there are no pauses.
Byron has used alliteration in the following line,
“Of cloudless climes and starry skies”
The 1st and 2nd lines of the poem also have a simile since Byron compares the movement of a woman to that of the skies. A number of metaphors and personifications have been used in the poem. Firstly, when grace, which is a quality, has been said to be nameless, as a person, secondly, when people’s thoughts have been compared to them, and lastly, when a woman’s brows and cheeks have been compared to a person.
“Had half impair’d the nameless grace”
“Where thoughts serenely sweet express
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,”
“So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.”
