She Walks in Beauty

The poem qualifies as a lyric, mostly because it’s relatively short and expresses the speaker’s subjective opinions about a woman. The theme of beauty connects to love. The woman’s appearance captivates the speaker and leaves them with intense feelings tantamount to love, which turns the poem into a love poem. Yet the hypothetical love isn’t synonymous with sex. While the speaker deeply admires the woman’s outward appearance, there’s no explicitly sexual language, so it looks like the lyrical poem is platonic, friendly, or familial. The speaker doesn’t outwardly express their physical desire to the woman. The speaker’s attraction is more intangible.

About Byron’s outsized life, Frank D. McConnell writes that, in the past, “interest in the man’s personality seemed far to outweigh the interest in the poems themselves” (Byron's Poetry xi). For critics and readers, it can be difficult to separate Byron from the speakers and his dramatic life. The speaker of “She Walks in Beauty” could be Byron—as the poet admired women and their beauty throughout his life—but to understand the poem, it’s not necessary to call the speaker Byron. The speaker says little about themselves since all their attention goes to the beautiful woman.

The lack of information about the speaker suggests a mysterious, unidentifiable person. The speaker could be several types of people, and a person of any gender can admire a beautiful individual, so it's acceptable to use they/them pronouns when referring to the speaker. What is most important isn’t the exact identity of the speaker but how the speaker reflects ideas and themes about feminine beauty.

The speaker’s tone about womanly beauty is celebratory, as they’re paying homage to the beautiful appearance of a woman, which is why “[s]he walks in beauty, like the night” (Line 1). The tone is also haunting, as the simile—a comparison using a connecting word such as “like”—links beauty to darkness or a time of day when people generally believe it’s more likely odious things can occur. The night doesn’t have any clouds, but it contains stars, so all “that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes” (Lines 3-4). The woman’s beauty contains two of the poem’s central tones: Her beauty is illuminating (“bright”) and enigmatic (“dark”).

The speaker also uses a delicate, spiritual tone: The female figure is “mellowed to that tender light / Which heaven to gaudy day denies” (Lines 5-6). The woman gives off a rare, gentle aurora—the kind that ordinary, earthly daytime lacks but heaven possesses. The dainty tone continues when the speaker announces, “One shade the more, one ray the less, / Had half impaired the nameless grace” (Lines 7-8). The woman’s beauty is notably particular, so a change in light or its intensity, however minor, can impact it. The fragility of her beauty means that it can’t bear the weight of a specific name, so the speaker keeps the woman and their description of her relatively abstract or nonspecific.

The wispy, elusive grace “waves in every raven tress, / Or softly lightens o’er her face” (Lines 8-9). A “tress” is a lock of hair, and a “raven” is a black-colored bird, so the color of the woman’s hair circles back to the poem’s partially dark tone, and the soft light on the woman’s face ties together the poem’s bright and delicate tones. The precious tone continues when the speaker says the woman’s thoughts are “serenely sweet” (Line 11) and then “pure” and “dear” (Line 12). The woman is virtuous and innocent, which puts her in a fragile spot because it means she has to rely on someone or something to help keep corruption away from her.

As the woman’s cheeks and forehead are “[s]o soft, so calm, yet eloquent” (Line 14), the gentle tone continues in Stanza 3. The bright tone remains present since the woman has “smiles that win, the tints that glow” (Line 15). The idea of innocence and virtue reappears since the woman spends her “days in goodness” (Line 16), has a mind “at peace” (Line 17), and has a “heart whose love is innocent” (Line 18).

The speaker wrote this poem to spotlight a beautiful, virtuous, and innocent woman. She is the poem’s central subject, so without her, the poem wouldn’t exist. The multiple tones correspond to the many elements of the woman’s beauty. Although the speaker is trying to celebrate this woman and her ethereal qualities, it’s possible to read the poem as a bit fetishistic. The speaker’s idolization arguably turns the woman into an object. She is too rare and otherworldly to be a real flesh-and-blood human.

Additionally, the portrait of the woman plays into tropes that present ideal womanhood as delicate. The speaker routinely praises the woman’s softness—not her power or strength but her lack of force. The lyric poem is relatively straightforward. As the title announces, it’s about a woman aligned with beauty. Yet its ideas about women and beauty are fraught and complex.