March 4, 2022
From Gerald R. Lucas
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She walks in beauty, like the night[2] |
Notes & Comentary
- ↑ Byron wrote this poem about his cousin Anne Wilmot and thier first meeting at a ball. It was the first poem of Hebrew Melodies, a collection of lyrics about Old Testament themes that were meant to accompany composer Isaac Nathan’s music.
- ↑ Anne Wilmot wore a black, sparkly dress when Byron first saw her. In this poem, Byron feminizes the night, endowing it with an attraction and beauty that “gaudy day denies.”
- ↑ A synecdoche of Bryon’s own “paradoxical nature” that defines the Byronic hero and his writing (Pesta 2004, p. 59). Darkness and light interplay throughout the poem, suggesting a paradoxical attraction of theme and subject, inverting, perhaps, a traditional morality that associates beauty and goodness with light.
Works Cited
- Pesta, Duke (2004). "'Darkness Visible': Byron and the Romantic Anti-Hero". In -last=Bloom, Harold. Lord Byron. Philadelphia: Chelsea House. pp. 59–.
