To Love, or Not to Love: Lord Byron's 'She walks in beauty'? Paige Bethany Graham College

Lord Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty’ was inspired by Mrs Wilmot, his cousin, Robert Wilmot’s wife. Byron’s glimpse of Mrs Wilmot, as well as the environment that surrounded them, contributed to the images of darkness in ‘She Walks in Beauty,’ from the mourning clothes she and others worn, correlating to themes of spiritual darkness which can be interpreted in the poem. Throughout, Lord Byron displays an unrealistic love, as he creates an idealistic image of her beauty that could be seen as incomparable. We can see that the speaker is physically attracted to the woman; however, we are not made aware of some of his deeper emotions, which are not directly described.

The speaker’s feelings are merely wistful than anything else as the main aspect described in this poem is the woman’s profound beauty; we know that her appearance is an important concept as her beauty is mentioned in the title. In the first stanza the woman is compared to the beauty of the night which can be seen as unconventional as beauty is usually compared to a summer’s day, the light of the sun, however Byron uses the dark of the night to emphasise the comparison ‘starry skies’ that she is as bright as the stars in the blackness of the night. We can also see that...