She Walks in Beauty

Lord Byron's poem "She Walks in Beauty" is a beautiful poem about the admiration of a woman
figure. I think it is important to note that although the title makes the poem sound like a love poem, I would argue that it is not. No where in the poem does the speaker say that they are in love with the woman. Instead the speaker discusses her physical and mental beauty through several natural images. For example, Byron compares the woman to the starry night skies, cloudless climes, raven tress, and tender light.

After reading the poem I thought it was interesting that Byron used nature imagery in order to describe a figure because the entire poem is simply about an observance of a woman. Instead of relying on setting as the main purpose of the poem, Byron focused on the woman and related nature to her in his poem. I thought this was a very different approach from Wordsworth, who would devote almost all of a poem to explaining a natural setting that the poem takes place in rather than the characters in his poetry.