She Walks in Beauty

The poem has an organized form. It’s arranged neatly into three six-line stanzas or sestets. While some lines contain more words than others, the lines look even because of the meter. Byron uses iambic tetrameter, which means that, in each line, there are four iambs or four pairs of unstressed, stressed syllables. In Line 1, the reader doesn’t stress “she” but stresses “walks,” they don’t stress the “in” but stress the “beau” of “beauty,” and so on. The pattern continues throughout the poem, although it may require the reader to pronounce some words peculiarly.

The carefully constructed form and meter reinforce the fragile presentation of beauty. Like beauty, the poem comprises delicate parts, as syllables or the sounds words make can be easy to manipulate. More so, the beautiful woman pleases the speaker, which is why they look at her. The poem, too, has a pleasing ring because of the meter and the rhymes. Each stanza follows an ABABAB rhyme scheme, which creates melody and circles back to the name of the collection the poem is a part of, Hebrew Melodies. Like a fair number of songs or melodies, “She Walks in Beauty” rhymes.