Romanticism was an artistic movement that dominated European culture from the late-18th century until the mid-19th century. Leading Romantic poets such as Lord George Gordon Byron emphasized certain tenets in their work, such as how emotion is considered more powerful than logic and how deeply the senses and personal emotion can influence a person. The speaker in “She Walks in Beauty” concentrates on a woman’s captivating attractiveness and purity and through imagery, simile, and antithesis, ponders how her beauty is in both her external appearance and her inner goodness.
The positive and celebratory tone of Lord Byron’s poem is evident as the speaker is telling himself what he finds most captivating about this woman. The speaker is keen to emphasize that his fascination is not all about outward appearances. The early description of her physical beauty is matched by the description of her inner beauty or “goodness” (16) towards the end of the poem. She almost seems to be unobtainable and, to some extent, readers can sympathize with the poet’s sense of longing. Nothing factual about the woman (her name, her age) is revealed. She therefore has a sense of
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The speaker exalts the woman, saying she has a “nameless grace/ Which waves in every raven tress” (8-9). The word “raven” (9) perhaps gives her a darker aspect, since it is traditionally associated with a bird of bad omen. There are several references to day and night, as well as to aspects of the natural world which create light (stars) and to an inner radiance the woman possesses. Byron uses strong contrasting images of light and darkness to convey extremes of emotion. Indeed, the speaker insists, “And all that’s best of dark and bright/ Meet in her aspect and her eyes” (3-4). The best features of light and its antithesis, darkness, meet to form something even greater in the subject’s extraordinary