English Poetry
Essay Preview: English Poetry
Report this essay
“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.” These are the words of true literary genius, George Gordon Byron, Good Morning Ladies and Gentleman of the Poetry Review Committee. Poetry is a form of literary art where language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. I am here today to present to you, Lord Byron, a poet who has demonstrated indisputably through his work, that poetry truly is beautiful and established verse. Unfortunately, in this day and age, poetry has been overlooked in the curriculum of senior schools. To prevent younger generations being marginalised involuntarily from this literary learning tool, I propose that two of Lord Byrons poems, She Walks in Beauty and When We Two Parted to be considered for inclusion in the Kaleidoscope of Poetry website.
George Gordon Byron was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. An international artistic and philosophical movement, Romanticism redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about the world. Born on the 22nd of January, 1788, Lord Byron was the son of Guards Officer, Captain John Byron. Abandoned by her husband, his mother, Catherine Gordon, took him in 1790 to Aberdeen, where they lived in considerable poverty, and where Byron attended the local school, learning early how to deal with the taunts concerning his physical deformity, a club foot. In 1798 he inherited the estates of his great uncle, Lord Byron and went on a grand tour beginning in 1809; during which he visited Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, Malta, Albania and Greece. Despite being well-known for his works, Byron was also infamously recognised for being in several unpleasant relationships, some of which were incestuous, bisexual and unfaithful. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”
The first peom I believe that should be considered for inclusion in the Kaleidoscope for Poetry website is She Walks in Beauty. In June 1814, Lord Byron attended a party where he was inspired by the sight of his cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Wilmot. Lord Byron was struck by his cousins dark hair and fair face, the mingling of various lights and shades. This became the essence of his poem about her. She Walks in Beauty is an eighteen-line poem made of three six-line stanzas, and the rhyme scheme follows ABABAB, CDCDCD, and EFEFEF. Moreover, the poem is in iambic tetrameter, a metre comprising of four feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the iamb of unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. She Walks in Beauty is a simple and easy poem, where rhetorical devices are not used, however the use of simile in line one is emphasised when Byron compares beauty with a cloudless and starry night. “She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies.” This is also an example of alliteration and assonance. The use of the oxymoron, “so soft, so calm, yet eloquent” in line twenty-four is expressed by the author as a girl with eloquent beauty because it talks by itself, but at the same time it is calm and soft, something delicate. Furthermore the language is simple, and the main words of the poem can be arranged into two groups. On one hand, the words that refer to the woman: aspect, eyes, raven tress, smile; and on the other hand, the words that refer to contrast between light and dark: cloudless, starry skies, and glow to name a few. I have understood that Byron feels that beauty is something which is dark and light, something apparent