She Walks In Beauty. By: George Gordon Byron

Poetry:

She Walks In Beauty.

By: George Gordon Byron

George Gordon was one of the most colourful personalities in English literature. He was a born rebel and expose the hypocrites of his age. As pointed by C. M. Bowra,

  “Though Byron abandoned Romantic view of the imagination and practical a new realistic art, he did not altogether abandon some themes and ideas which means most to the romantics like the Romantics he had a deep love for nature freedom, passion, melancholy and romance.”

     In 1809 he had done a tour of Mediterranean. He had visited Portugal, Spain Malta, Albania, Greece, and Turkey. Returning in 1811, he published a long poem based on these travels. Child Harold “Pilgrimage” in 1812. He soon because the cult figure and ideal for the youth. His most famous work were Dan Juan child Han. The outstanding feature of his poetry are the vitality descriptive power and the stem of his personality, Drama’s in blunt verse.

  

          “She Walks In Beauty” written in 1815 is the first of the Hebrew Melodies, this poem is inspired by the legendary beauty of Lady Wilmot. The poem is an Idealized picture of a woman. Its common defect is the lack of ring of sincerity about it. A Good painter bakes come to see that there is a perfect balance of light and shade in his picture sketch a balance is maintained in the pen-portrait of this beautiful women. The editor once said that-

  “These stanzas were: written by Lord Byron on returning from a ball room where he had seen Mrs. Wilmot Horton a cousin of Lady Byron on this occasion Mrs. Wilmot Horton had appeared in mourning with numerous spangles on her dress.”

   The poem is divided in to three having lines each, the rhyme is ab, ab, ab.

  “She dream in beauty, like the night of cloudless dimes and stony skies cloudless”.

  Byron’s dream girl is beauty incarnate she is as beautiful as the night of cloudless climate and starry skies. Her physical beauty corresponds to natural beauty of night. In a fine simile he composes the beauty of the women.

“And all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.”

          He adds that a woman’s beauty is but a reflection of her inner beauty- the beauty of her heart and soul. Thus a truly beautiful women is not only beautiful in body but in soul and mind as well-Plato’s expression of beautiful soul.

“Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dealing – place.”

           The wood ‘Mellowed’ in fifteen line suggests the perfect balancing of contraries- best of dark bright which are blended so perfectly in her aspect that  any attempt to add or subtract will ‘half’ impaired her balanced beauty. In second stanza, He call her as ‘Nameless Grace’.

“The smiles that win,

 The tints that glow.

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below.”

            The poem personifies beauty in all its aspects: physical mental and emotional. She is gorgeous. Her thoughts admire their ‘dwelling place’- the mind. The beautiful lady’s smile is so soft and yet so eloquent that it spreads all over her cheek and eyebrow. Her smile is powerful enough to win anyone’s heart that comes under her spell.