The Text

She walks in Beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and night
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half-impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face ;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent. #

Romantic Vision

The celebrated poem introduces a woman to the scene through the use of a graceful simile intended to establish a correspondence between the lady and the starlit night. Thus the comparison “She walks in Beauty like the night/ Of cloudless climes and starry skies” enables the reader to have a close-up view of a flawless walking beauty. It then glides down softly to the amplification of the subject, the ideal beauty of a woman, a topic very natural for a romantic poet like Byron to treat.

Critics point to Mrs. Anne Beatrix, Lady Wilmot (Lord Byron’s cousin’s wife) , whom Lord Byron met in 1814 at an evening party where she was wearing a black sequined gown. The sparkle of her eyes set off through the dark gown transfigures the lady into an aesthetic image which provides the visual motif of dark and light pervading the poem. Thus, the “tender light” emanates not from the night but from her eyes and all about her. The tender light is denied to “gaudy day” which, by implication, means that the woman is brighter (or more beautiful) than day. Byron sums up her beauty as a perfect paradigm “of all that’s best of dark and bright” that “met in her aspect and her eyes”. Impliedly, adding or subtracting from the total effect would in effect half – diminish the unspeakable beauty, a “nameless grace.”

Through the catalogue system Lord Byron enumerates the lady’s physical assets: her “raven tresses”, her face “where thoughts serenely sweet express”, her ” brow so soft, so calm, yet eloquent” , her “smiles that win”, the tints of her skin which “glow”, her “mind at peace”, and above all, “a heart whose love is innocent.” The last qualifier may mean that the woman is capable of unconditional love. Since there is nothing in the poem to hint why Lord Byron says so, the reader is free to imagine that he knows her well. His total configuration of a lady of adorable grace and innocent love is actually an exercise at transforming the ordinary to the extraordinary in order to lengthen perspective, a practice much in the tradition of Romantic poetry. The search for ideal beauty is a consuming passion in Romanticism.

Byron’s hyperbolic description of the lady is a form of conceit, a far-fetched comparison. Personification, hyperbole, allusion, contrast, and rhyme contrive to set off the aesthetic dimensions of the poem, projecting thus an illusion of a deified woman.

Byron uses three symbols– woman, star, and night– to provide the erotic paradigm. The poet sounds playful, an indication of his fling being a hedonist and an idealist. ###