She-Walks-in-Beauty的英文鉴赏.doc

The Appreciation of She Walks in BeautyByron is one of the most excellent representatives of English Romanticism and one of the most influential poets of the time. His literary career was closely linked with the struggle and progressive movements of his age. He opposed oppression and slavery, and has an ardent (passionate) love for liberty. He praised the peoples revolutionary struggles in his works. His poems are favorites of the British workers and the laboring people of other countries. Byrons poems show energy and vigor, romantic daring (bold, brave) and powerful passion. He stands with Shakespeare and Scott among the British writers who exert the greatest influence over the mainland Europe and the Chinese youth greatly. But some critics think many of his lines are harsh (unkind), rugged (rough) and not rhythmical. Some poems show his individual heroism and pessimism.She Walks in Beauty” is frequently considered one of his most powerful works.It is an eighteen-line poem, much shorter than Byrons famous narrative poems, like Childe Harolds Pilgrimage or Don Juan. But despite its relative brevity, She Walks in Beauty has become one of the most well-known and easily recognized poems written by Byron. It is a lyric poem centering on the extraordinary beauty of a young lady. Lord Byron wrote the poem in 1814 and published it in a collection, Hebrew Melodies, in 1815. As the name of the volume suggests, the poems in that volume were written to be set to music.On the evening of June 11, 1814, Byron attended a party with his friend, James Wedderburn Webster, at the London home of Lady Sarah Caroline Sitwell. Among the other guests was the wife of Byrons cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Anne Beatrix Wilmot, who was newly widowed and wore a black mourning gown brighten with spangles. Her exquisite good looks dazzled Byron and inspired him to write “She Walks in Beauty.” As the title says, She walks in beauty, the main theme of the poem is the description of a lady, the enumeration of certain qualities that the author considers give her beauty. The introduction of the verb to “walk” in the title is important because it gives connotations of advancing, not only in space but also in time. It makes reference to the movement of walking, introducing the reader this way into a reading which is going to be constant through out the entire poem. The poem uses images of light and darkness interacting to describe the wide spectrum of elements in a beautiful womans personality and looks. Unlike common love poetry, which makes the claim that its subject is filled with beauty, this poem describes its subject as being possessed by beauty. This woman does have beauty within her, but it is to such a great degree that she is actually surrounded by it, like an aura. To some extent, her positive attributes create her beauty, and so the poem makes a point of mentioning her goodness, her serenity, and her innocence, which all have a direct causal effect on her looks.The three six-line stanzas of this poem all follow the same rhyme scheme and the same metrical pattern. There are only six rhyming sounds in this eighteen-line poem because the poem rhymes ababab, cdcdcd, efefef . Oftentimes poets use their poetic structures to mirror what the poems chief concerns are. Poetic formstanzas and meterand contentwhat the poems subject isare almost always related. The meter is also very regulariambic tetrameter. The pairing of two rhyming sounds in each stanza works well because the poem concerns itself with the two forcesdarkness and lightat work in the womans beauty, and also the two areas of her beautythe internal and the external. The rhyming words themselves, especially in the first stanza, have importance: notice how night rhymes with its opposites, light and bright, in the same way that this woman contains the two opposing forces in her particular type of beauty.The first couple of lines can be confusing if not read properly. Too often readers stop at the end of the first line where there is no punctuation. This is an enjambed line, meaning that it continues without pause onto the second line. That she walks in beauty like the night may not make sense as night represents darkness. However, as the line continues, the night is a cloudless one with bright stars to create a beautiful mellow glow. The first two lines bring together the opposing qualities of darkness and light that are at play throughout the three verses. The remaining lines of the first verse employ another set of enjambed lines that tell us that her face and eyes combine all thats best of dark and bright. No mention is made here or elsewhere in the poem of any other physical features of the lady. The focus of the vision is upon the details of the ladys face and eyes which reflect the mellowed and tender light. She has a remarkable quality of being able to contain the opposites of dark and bright. The third and fourth lines are not only enjambed, but the fourth line begins with an irregularity in the meter called a metrical substitution. The fourth line starts with an accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, rather than the iambic meter of the other lines, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. The result is that the word Meet receives attention, an emphasis. The ladys unique feature is that opposites meet in her in a wonderful way.The second verse tells us that the glow of the ladys face is nearly perfect. The shades and rays are in just the right proportion, and because they are, the lady possesses a nameless grace. This conveys the romantic idea that her inner beauty is mirrored by her outer beauty. Her thoughts are serene and sweet. She is pure and dear. The last verse is split between three lines of physical description and three lines that describe the ladys moral character. Her soft, calm glow reflects a life of peace and goodness. This is a repetition, an emphasis, of the theme that the ladys physical beauty is a reflection of her inner beauty.Lord Byron greatly admired his cousins serene qualities on that particular night and he has left us with an inspired poem. Before you go any further, we should warn you: She Walks in Beauty is not a love poem. Sure, its a celebration of a womans beauty, but the speaker never says hes in love with her. He just thinks shes really, really gorgeous. The poem is about an unnamed woman. Shes really quite striking, and the speaker compares her to lots of beautiful, but dark, things, like night and starry skies. The second stanza continues to use the contrast between light and dark, day and night, to describe her beauty. We also learn that her face is really pure and sweet. The third stanza wraps it all up shes not just beautiful, shes good and innocent, to boot. The theme of the poem is the