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She Walks in Beauty | Introduction

Written in 1814, when Byron was twenty-six years old, and published in Hebrew Melodies in 1815, the poem of praise “She Walks in Beauty” was inspired by the poet’s first sight of his young cousin by marriage, Anne Wilmot. According to literary historians, Byron’s cousin wore a black gown that was brightened with spangles. This description helps the reader understand the origin of the poem, and its mixing together of images of darkness and light, but the poem itself cannot be reduced to its origins; its beauty lies in its powerful description not only of a woman’s physical beauty, but also of her interior strengths. There is no mention in the poem of spangles or a gown, no images of a woman actually walking, because the poet is after something larger than mere physical description.

She Walks in Beauty Summary

Lines 1–2
Readers of poetry often get confused because they stop when they reach the end of a line, even if there is no mark of punctuation there. This could be the case with this poem, which opens with an enjambed line, a line that does not end with a mark of punctuation. The word enjambment comes from the French word for leg, “jamb”; a line is enjambed when it runs over (using its “legs”) to the next line without a pause. If read by itself, the first line becomes confusing because the reader can only see a dark image, almost a blank image. If “she walks in beauty, like the night,” a reader might wonder how she can be seen. But the line continues: the night is a cloudless one and the stars are bright. So immediately the poem brings together its two opposing forces that will be at work, darkness and light.

Lines 3–4
These lines work well because they employ an enjambed line as well as a metrical substitution— a momentary change in the regular meter of the poem. When poets enjamb a line and use a metrical substitution at the beginning of the next line, they are calling attention to something that is a key to a poem. Here Byron substitutes atrochaic foot (an accented syllable followed by an unaccented one) for the iambic foot at the start of the fourth line. Why? Because he is putting particular emphasis on that word “meet.” He is emphasizing that the unique feature of this woman is her ability to contain opposites within her; “the best of dark and bright / meet” in her. In the same way that enjambment forces lines together, and a metrical substitution jars the reader somewhat, this woman joins together... » Complete She Walks in Beauty Summary