Legal Law

By Lord Byron "She walks in beauty"

Lord Byron’s opening couplet to “She Walks In Beauty” is among the most memorable and most quoted lines in romantic poetry. The opening lines are simple, elegant, and beautiful, a fitting combination for his poem about a woman who possesses effortless grace and beauty.

Life in england

Lord Byron was born George Gordon Noel Byron in London in 1788. He became Lord in 1798 when he inherited title and property from his great-uncle. Byron’s mother had brought him to Scotland for clubfoot treatment, but brought him back to England to claim title and ownership.

Byron received private tutoring in Nottingham for a short period. He then studied at Harrow, Southwell, and Newstead, and finally Trinity College. Byron discovered his talent for writing poetry and published some of his first poems in 1806 and his first collection, entitled Hours of Odleness, in 1807 at the age of 19. When he turned 21 he was able to take his seat in the House of Lords.

However, Lord Byron left England for two years with his friend, John Hobhouse, to travel around Europe. They toured Spain, Malta, Greece and Constantinople. Greece especially impressed Byron and would create a recurring theme in his life.

After returning to England, Lord Byron made his first speech in the House of Lords. Later that year he published a “poetic travel notebook” entitled, Childe Harold Pilgrimage, a respectable collection of verses about his recent travels in Europe. The collection earned Lord Byron lasting fame and admiration. Lord Byron had become a womanizer and the newly-won celebrity brought him a series of affairs and courtships.

Lord Byron married Anna Isabella Milbanke in 1815 and their daughter, Augusta, was born that same year. However, the marriage did not last long. In early 1816, Anna and Augusta left Lord Byron and later that year he applied for legal separation and left England for Switzerland, a self-imposed exile.

Life in europe

While in Switzerland, Lord Byron stayed with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a prominent metaphysical and romantic poet, and had an illegitimate daughter, Allegra, with Claire Clairmont. After that adventure ended, Lord Byron and his friend, John Hobhouse traveled through Italy, settling first in Venice, where he had a couple more adventures, including an affair with the nineteen-year-old Countess Teresa Guicciolo. Here Lord Byron began his most famous and acclaimed work, the epic poem Don Juan.

Lord Byron and Teresa moved to Ravenna, then Pisa, and then Livorno, near Shelley’s house, in 1821. The poet Leigh Hunt moved in with Lord Byron that same year after Shelley drowned on the coast near from Livorno in a storm. Lord Byron contributed poetry to Hunt’s newspaper, The liberal, until 1823 when he took the opportunity to travel to Greece to act as an agent for the Greeks in their war against Turkey.

Lord Byron used his personal finances to help finance some of the battles of the Greeks against the Turks. He even commanded a force of three thousand men in an attack on the Turkish-controlled fortress of Lepanto. The siege was unsuccessful and the forces withdrew. At that time, Lord Byron suffered one or two epileptic seizures. The remedy of the day, the hemorrhage, weakened him.

Six weeks later, during a particularly cold storm, Lord Byron caught a bad cold. The accompanying fever was treated with repeated bleeding by trusted physicians, but his condition worsened until he finally slipped into a coma and died on April 19, 1824.

Lord Byron was a hero in Greece and was deeply mourned there. His heart was buried in Greece and his body was shipped to England, where he was buried in the family vault near Newstead. He was denied burial at Westminster Abbey due to the perceived immorality of his life and numerous controversies. Finally, in 1969, 145 years after his death, a monument was placed in Westminster Abbey Poets’ Corner, commemorating his poetry and accomplishments.

Shortly after their arrival in Greece, Lord Byron had written these appropriate lines.

“Search, less sought than found,

The grave of a soldier – for you the best

So look around and choose your terrain

And rests “.

An interesting and exceptional biography of Lord Byron’s life was written in 1830 by a friend and contemporary, John Galt, entitled, Lord Byron’s life. The 49 chapters give a good measure of Lord Byron’s complexity.

“She walks in beauty”

In June 1814, several months before meeting and marrying his first wife, Anna Milbanke, Lord Byron attended a party at Lady Sitwell’s. While at the party, Lord Byron was inspired by seeing his cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Wilmot, wearing a sequined black mourning dress. Lord Byron was impressed by the dark hair and blond face of his cousin, the mixture of various lights and shadows. This became the essence of his poem about her.

According to his friend, James W. Webster, “I took him to Lady Sitwell’s party on Seymour Road. There he saw for the first time his cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Wilmot. When we returned to his rooms in Albany, he said little, but he wished to have Fletcher give her a glass of brandy, which she drank at once to Mrs. Wilmot’s health, then retired to rest and, as I later learned, was in a sad state all night. lines about her – She walks in Beauty as the night … “

The poem was published in 1815. Also in that year Lord Byron wrote a series of songs to be adjusted to the traditional Jewish melodies of Isaac Nathan. Lord Byron included “She Walks in Beauty” with those poems.

She walks in beauty

1

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of clear climates and starry skies;

And all that is better between the dark and the bright

Find in his appearance and his eyes:

So softened in that tender light

That the sky denies the screeching day.

2

One more tone, one less ray

I had half damaged the nameless grace

That flutters in every raven braid,

Or it glows softly on your face;

Where serenely sweet thoughts are expressed

How pure, how dear his abode.

3

And on that cheek, and on that forehead,

So soft, so calm, but eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that shine

But talk about the days you spent in goodness

One mind at peace with everyone below

A heart whose love is innocent!

Discussion of the poem

The first two lines can be confusing if they are not read correctly. Too often, readers stop at the end of the first line where there is no punctuation. This is a nested line, which means it continues without a pause on the second line. That I walk in beauty like the night may not make sense, since the night represents darkness. However, as the line continues, the night is cloudless with sparkling stars to create a beautiful soft glow. The first two lines bring together the opposite qualities of darkness and light that are at play throughout the three verses.

The remaining lines of the first verse employ another set of interlocking lines that tell us that his face and eyes combine all the best of the dark and the bright. No mention is made here or elsewhere in the poem of any other physical aspect of the lady. The focus of vision is on the details of the lady’s face and eyes, reflecting the soft, tender light. She has a remarkable quality of being able to contain the opposites of darkness and brilliance.

Not only are the third and fourth lines nested, but the fourth line begins with an irregularity in the meter called a metric substitution. The fourth line begins with an accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, instead of the iambic metric of the other lines, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. The result is that the word “Meet” receives attention, an emphasis. The unique characteristic of the lady is that the opposites “meet” in her in a wonderful way.

The second verse tells us that the brightness of the lady’s face is almost perfect. The shadows and rays are in the right proportion, and because they are, the lady possesses a nameless grace. This conveys the romantic idea that your inner beauty is reflected in your outer beauty. His thoughts are calm and sweet. She is pure and dear.

The last verse is divided between three lines of physical description and three lines that describe the moral character of the lady. Its soft, calm glow reflects a life of peace and goodness. This is a repetition, an emphasis, of the theme that the physical beauty of the lady is a reflection of her inner beauty.

Lord Byron greatly admired his cousin’s serene qualities on that particular night and left us an inspired poem.

The poem was written shortly before Lord Byron’s marriage to Anna Milbanke and published shortly after the marriage.

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