She Walks In Beauty 'And The Destruction Of The Sennacherib'

Kelsey May
Mrs. Donaldson
English 12, Period 1
10 November 2011
Comparisons of Lord Byron’s Poetry Lord Byron wrote poetry during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when Romanticism flourished worldwide. Influences were far and wide for Byron’s poetry; from religious-biblical events to his beautiful female cousin’s marriage, he wrote about any subject matter he found interesting at that time. “She Walks in Beauty” and “The Destruction of the Sennacherib” are two of Byron’s poems that are well known in literature. “She Walks in Beauty” caught the attention of many people as one of Byron’s best poems; it is considered to be a Hebrew melody written from a third person narrative point of view. “The Destruction of Sennacherib”
He uses literary devices such as prepositional phrases, similes, and symbolism along with consonance and assonance to paint the vivid pictures he tries to portray. “She Walks in Beauty” begins with a simile comparing the women who is the subject of the poem to a cloudless night with bright stars. Together the lack of clouds and bright stars combine to symbolize the beauty of the woman’s talent to “contain opposite forces within her” (Hacht 269). “The Destruction of the Sennacherib” opens in a similar way, referencing to a Biblical battle in terms of good and evil. During the battle, the Assyrian king Sennacherib and his army act as the evil trying to defeat Israel which portrays good. Byron uses a simile to compare Sennacherib to a wolf invading Israel which Byron also uses simile to compare to a flock of sheep. Byron uses his “word pictures” to create an incredibly amazing scene so that the destruction of Israel is more evident later in the poem (Napierkowski and Ruby
The symbolism seen in these two poems heavily connects with his perspective of life as it is what he leans on to write his poetry (Kelsall 171). In “The Destruction of Sennacherib” color plays a huge role in symbolism; green symbolizes the energy, life, and maybe even confidence of Assyrian troops. The color green, Brent Goodman says, “usually reminds us of vitality, freshness, and life.” A few lines later the color quickly fades from green color of spring to colors of the fall symbolizing the death brought upon Sennacherib along with the death of his horse and troops. The color sets a dull and lifeless scene for the rest of Byron’s poem. In “She Walks in Beauty,” Byron uses physical features of the woman to symbolize the beauty of her inner self. Eyes are often thought of as simply an attractive feature of a person, but in this sense Byron is saying eyes but meaning soul. As Anne Marie Hacht points out, “in literature . . . the eyes reveal the heart”