She Walks in Beauty Analysis

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...

ABABAB Iambic TetrameterThe poem is divided into three stanzas of six lines each, with an ABABAB rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme is pretty tidy, but what's up with the meter? The "meter" of a poem r...

The speaker of "She Walks in Beauty" admires the effortless harmony of a woman's beauty, and tells us that it's all about the perfect balance of light and dark in her whole face and figure. He neve...

The setting of the poem is never made explicit – the woman is compared, in the opening lines, to "night" and "starry skies," so we imagine the entire poem taking place during the night. It's...

"She Walks in Beauty" has such a regular meter and rhyme scheme that you almost find yourself swaying along with the rhythm as you read it. The sound of the poem is mesmerizing and melodic. Take th...

We usually refer to this poem simply by its first line, "She Walks in Beauty." But the first line does more than introduce the subject of the poem – a beautiful woman. The first line of the p...

The father of all emo rockersThat's right, you heard it here first: Byron is the father of all angst-ridden poets and emo singers and songwriters. Unattainable beauty, unrequited love, forbidden lo...

(4) Base Camp This is a pretty accessible poem, even for beginning readers of poetry. The trickiest thing about it is the syntax: the structure of the sentences doesn't always match up with the str...

Byron is known for transgressing the conventional moral codes of his day. After a scandalous separation from his wife, Annabella, Byron left England to live in continental Europe, in order to escap...

PGThere's not a lot of sex going on in this poem. Not that we think the speaker would object to it, mind you, but the unnamed lady is too "innocent" for any of that. If you want steaminess in a Byr...

Literary and Philosophical ReferencesWilliam Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 (lines 1-2). The opening simile of the poem, which compares the beautiful woman to "the night / of cloudless climes and starry sk...