Romantic Poetry
George Gordon , Lord Byron
Biography
George Gordon or Lord Byron.
1788-1824. He lived in London , England
He came from two high strung and undisciplined families with
reputations of reckless living and violence.
His father was a spendthrift army captain and a playboy (“Mad
Jack”).
His father married two heiresses and obtained their fortunes.
Byron’s mother (Calvinistic) was tempestuous, proud, and
slightly mad but showered her child with love.
Biography
• By the age of 10 Byron became the 6th Lord Byron after the death
of his great – uncle. He inherited a fortune and an estate.
• He entered Cambridge at the age of 17
• At the age of 23 he published the first two of the cantos of Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage (rhapsodies of nature), which became very
popular. Women threw themselves at him.
• After having several love affairs( he was “mad—bad—and
dangerous to know”), he married his wife Annabella Milbanke, who
was a very proper women. He did this to gain some stability and
respect in his life.
Biography
• After one year of marriage, she started to question
his sanity and returned to her parent’s home and
took their new born daughter never to be seen by
Byron again.
• Because of the separation between him and his
wife disrupted society, Byron was forced to leave
England in 1816 for good.
• Byron died of malaria April 19, 1824 at the age of
36 after contracting a fever while aiding a group of
Greek insurgents fighting for independence from the
Influences
• Byron’s influences were authors and artists of the
Romantic movement and by the writers of Gothic
fiction during the 19th century. Close friends included
the Shelley’s
•He also used people from his everyday life such as
his personal physician for the character of Lord
Ruthven in the The Vampyre.
Writing style
•Byron is known for being a mean, dangerous
man. His poems are deep, and reflect his
personal feelings. In this particular poem "She
Walks in Beauty" Byron used a great deal of
imagery to stress how beautiful and graceful the
women was. Many thought the woman in the
poem was a cousin he met for the 1st time at a
funeral.
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 mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd 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!
Imagery
•
Gives a visual of how beautiful she is with: “like the night
of cloudless climes and starry skies”
•
Description of her hair saying that there are “waves in
every raven tress”
•
“Where thoughts serenely sweet express” is a form of
alliteration.
•
“The smiles that win, the tints that glow” is a form of
personification.
Lines 1-2
The poem opens with an enjambed line, a
line that does not end with a mark of
punctuation.
 The poem immediately brings together two
opposing forces that will be at work,
darkness and light.

Lines 3-4
There is an enjambed line as well as a
metrical substitution—a momentary change
in the regular meter of the poem
 This is to call attention to something that is
key
 By substituting a trochaic foot for the iambic
foot at the start of the 4th line, he is putting
emphasis on the word “meet”

Lines 5-6
“meet” is echoed with the initial “m” sound in
“mellowed”
 This woman joins together what is normally
kept separate.
 The meeting of the two extremes of this
woman pleases him

Lines 7-10
Opposites are combined here again—
“shade” is combined with “day” and “raven
tress” is linked with a lightened face.
 If the woman contained within her and in her
appearance either a little bit more of
darkness or a little bit more of light, she
would be “half impaired.”
 There is something internal as well as
external that is so attractive about her.

Lines 11-12
The whole poem is about her head, confined
to her hair and eyes and face and cheeks,
and brow.
 The repetition of the “s” sounds is soothing in
the phrase “serenely sweet express”

Lines 13-18
Byron concludes the poem with three lines of
physical description that lead to the final
three lines of moral characterization
 All of her beauty is a testament to her
morality
 They physical beauty reflects days spent
doing good, a peaceful mind, and a “heart
whose love is innocent.”

Literary Elements
•
The tone of this poem is very loving and calm with the
description of her smile , her eyes, and the light that
she illuminates.
•
When the poem talks of “the best of dark and bright”
that gives us the idea that such a lady includes her
qualities light and darkness, good and evil, and she is
a mixture of both
Figures of speech and
sound
•
The sounds and rhyme scheme in this poem are
simple; Byron might have used this to keep the
layout simple so that the descriptive words of the
women’s beauty can be visualized.
Allusion
This poem is not necessarily a love poem, but
more of a celebration of the subject's beauty. Some
critics have said that Byron fell passionately in love
with his cousin and wrote this poem for her. He met
her for the first time while she was at a funeral of a
loved one. She wore a black evening dress (hence
the allusions to darkness, with the light referring to
her beauty) Lord Byron encountered his cousin,
known for her great beauty, and was taken aback.
Nowhere in the poem does Byron mention or allude
to love as this was more of a fascination.
Theme: Harmony
Unlike common love poetry, this poem
describes the subject as being possessed by
beauty. The woman is beautiful, but it is so great
that she is actually surrounded by it, like an aura.
To some extent, her positive attributes create her
beauty, and the poem makes a point of mentioning
her goodness, her serenity, and her innocence,
which all have an effect on her looks.
Theme: Beauty
There is another element, the “nameless
grace” that is a type of beauty granted by
heaven, as in the expression “she is graced
by beauty.” The woman described in this
poem is completely beautiful, inside and out,
so that Byron goes out of his way to mention
all of the sources to show that he
appreciates her beauty to its fullest.
Theme: Flesh vs Spirit



Byron claims that the woman’s virtues are the
cause of her external beauty, but there is no real
proof of any link between spirit and the flesh
The version of the mind-body duality that Byron
presents in this poem is the opposite of the one that
measures neural reactions.
To him the woman’s beauty originates in her
thoughts, and the innocence and purity of her mind
manifest themselves on her face to create the
beauty he sees
Theme: Perfection
She is an image of womanly perfection
 All elements about her must be kept in
exactly the present proportions for her
beauty to remain.
 This is perfection

Style
Three six-line stanzas follow the same
rhyme scheme and metrical pattern
 Only six rhyming sounds in this 18 line poem
because of the ababab cdcdcd efefef
 Meter is iambic tetrameter:
U
/
U
/ U / U /
She walks / in beau / ty like / the night

Byronic Hero


Modern appreciation of the poetry of Lord Byron is
focused mainly on his works about male characters
who in some ways represent the poet, or at least
the person the poet like to think he was.
Like the Hemingway “code-hero” who embodied
manly ideals that biographers can show
Hemingway was trying to incorporate, the Byronic
hero had elements of genius, tragedy, and sex
appeal that set the standard for the poet, as well as
for generations of would-be misunderstood poets
for years to come.
Byronic Hero Definition

A lonely, alienated figure, dwelling in the
remote outposts of nature, haunted by a
sense of mysterious guilt and a pouring out
of his emotions for all to share.