English History

  • Poets
    • Byron
      • Letters
      • Poems
      • General
    • Keats
      • Letters
      • Poetry
    • Shakespeare
      • Plays
    • Tennyson
  • Vikings
  • Middle Ages
  • Stuarts
    • English Civil War
  • Tudor
    • Monarchs
    • Citizens
    • Relatives
    • Letters
    • Quizzes
  • Vikings
  • About
    • Start a History Blog
    • Cookie Policy
    • Contact
    • The Right to Display Public Domain Images
    • Author & Reference Information For Students

She Walks in Beauty Poem

This is perhaps the most famous of Byron’s short poems. On 11 June 1814, Byron attended a fashionable party at Lady Sitwell’s, and met – for the first time – his cousin, Lady Wilmot Horton. The young lady wore a mourning dress and it was the contrast between her youthful beauty and her somber attire that sparked the poem. He wrote it that same evening, and it was included in his 1815 collection, Hebrew Melodies.

It is written in iambic tetrameter, a style typically used for hymns. This makes perfect sense for the Hebrew Melodies collection was intended to be – literally – a collection of Old Testament-themed melodies. Lyrics were to be provided by Byron, and music by Isaac Nathan, a Rabbinical student lately turned composer who was four years Byron’s junior. Their collaboration was encouraged by Byron’s friend (and banker), Douglas Kinnaird. Byron quite generously gave Nathan copyright to his ‘lyrics’. Nathan’s music was intended to reflect the spirit and style of old Hebrew folk songs.

 

I.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

 

II.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired 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.

 

III.

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.

 

Read More English History Topics

Link/cite this page

If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content.

Link will appear as Hanson, Marilee. "She Walks in Beauty Poem" https://englishhistory.net/byron/poems/she-walks-in-beauty/, April 19, 2015

Search English History

Popular Posts

Mary Boleyn: Biography, Portrait, Facts & Information
Queen Elizabeth by Edward Spencer Beesly, 1892 – Chapter IV
The Coronation/Crowning Of Anne Boleyn, 1533
Robin Hood. To a Friend By John Keats
Sidney Colvin John Keats Biography Chapter III

Related Posts

On a Distant View of the Village and School of Harrow on the Hill

So We’ll Go No More A-Roving

Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

Versicles

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

The Tudors

Lord Byron

John Keats

shakespeare

Copyright © 1999-2021 All Rights Reserved.
English History
Other Sites: Learn Web Development

This site uses cookies More info