An ode to a beautiful woman that is unknowing of such admiration. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker is comparing the beauty of the nameless woman to the night by saying, "She walks in beauty, like the night." This line to be implies that with stars being visible, the glow from the moon, she is a sight to behold just like the night sky. In the following lines, the speaker states, "And all that's best of dark and bright/ Meet in her aspect and her eyes." It is a safe assumption to make that given the beauty of both night and day, their best attributes are possessed by this woman. The first stanza reminds me of how in movies, when a beautiful woman walks into a room, they are walking in slow motion with wind blowing through their hair. I feel as if this was such a case with the speaker.
The speaker in this ode continues to describe the beauty of his mysterious beauty. Yet for me, its all about generalizations, especially in the final stanza. The speaker begins speaking of her eloquency, her goodness, and even her innocense all qualities that cannot be determined just from watching. The last stanza for the speaker is all of the qualities that is supposedly attributed to being beautiful. In line 17 of the poem, "A mind at peace with all below." For me that lines actually refers to her as a goddess. I believe that the speaker is giving her godly characteristics, because there is no other explanation of her being as beautiful as she is.
With this poem, it is a very beautifully written poem that expresses a thought of seeing beauty in its puriest form. While reading this poem, I thought about how I would have reacted to seeing such beauty, or even if I have ever seen beauty to that extend. What I came up with is that, besides the beauty of children and scenes from nature, nothing as stirred me to core like that of the speaker.
Good selection of a poem to discuss. You do a good job several times of selecting and digging into specific passages from Byron's poem. While one time you merely rephrase the quotation, most of the time you demonstrate original thought and engaged responses. Be sure to do more of that in your subsequent discussions of texts in your posts. Also, please remember to proofread your posts for issues in spelling, grammar and punctuation. Although a blog is a less formal genre of writing, and therefore such issues are not too crucial, those kinds of errors do distract your readers away from your ideas; also, I want to get you in the habit of proofreading for your research paper, which is a more formal genre and requires greater standards of correctness.
ReplyDeleteI love this poem. Especially the first line. I'm a night owl and I always love to sit outside at night and enjoy the peacefulness that is the night.Maybe one of the things that make Byron's mystery lady so beautiful is the peace she brings him.
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