Lord Byron
AND THE FIRST STANZA OF “SHE WALKS IN
BEAUTY”
MEREDITH MARTIN
7 TH P E R I O D
Lord George Gordon Byron’s Biography
 1788 – 1824
 Handsome and daring figure in literary history
 Born into family of soldiers, seamen, and fighters
 Born with a club leg, gave him a limp, had to prove
himself physically through sports
 Dare-devil personality
 At 10 years old, inherited the estate of his great-uncle
and the title of sixth Baron Byron
 Fame came from publishing Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage
Biography Continued
 Lived a reckless and dissipated lifestyle which to debts
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and depression
Also had many romantic relationships, but only one
marriage
Rumors about Byron provoked him into leaving England
and moving to Switzerland and then later Italy
His masterpiece, Don Juan, was written while he was in
Italy
Went to help Greece in their war against Turkish rule,
but well he was in training he caught a fever and died
National hero in Greece for his dedication to the
country’s revolution
Background
 Byron was the most popular poet during the
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romantic period
The heroes of his poems were “rebellious, moody
people of great passion and strong will”
Byron was the ideal example of the romantic spirit
His poetry was rooted in 18th-century forms, no
experimentation
His journeys to Portugal, Spain, Malta, Greece, and
Asia Minor inspired his work Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage
Stanza one of “She Walks in Beauty”
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
Lines 1-2: The woman is as beautiful as
a cloudless, starry night sky
Lines 3-4: the woman’s eyes and face
combine the opposites of darkness and
light, her face is able to combine
opposite things together to form
something beautiful
Lines 5-6: emphasizes the contrast the
woman’s beauty contains
- Light and darkness is evident in the
first stanza to show how beauty contains
aspects which are light and bright while
other aspects which are dark and more
effort is needed to see them
Characteristics of Romanticism
 Love of Nature
 “She walks in beauty, like the night/Of cloudless chimes and
starry skies”
 Idealism
 “And all that’s best of dark and bright/Meet in her aspect and
her eyes”
Poetic Devices
 Rhyme scheme: ABABAB
 Meter: tetrameter iambic
 Lines 1 and 2 contain an enjambment (no pause
between lines)
 Alliteration in line 2 (cloudless chimes & starry skies)
and line 6 (day denies)
 Smile in line 1-2 (compares woman’s beauty to “like
the night/Of cloudless climes and starry skies”)
Bibliography
 The Language of Literature: British Literature.
Evanston, Ill.: McDougal Littell, 2000. Print.
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pages 773-774 and 780
 http://mural.uv.es/bosmarmi/shewalksinBeauty.ht
ml
 http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides5/She
Walks.html
 Picture of Lord Byron:
http://www.loyno.edu/~etc/images/lord-byron.JPG