She Walks in Beauty

The poem qualifies as a lyric, mostly because it’s relatively short and expresses the speaker’s subjective opinions about a woman. The theme of beauty connects to love. The woman’s appearance captivates the speaker and leaves them with intense feelings tantamount to love, which turns the poem into a love poem. Yet the hypothetical love isn’t synonymous with sex. While the speaker deeply admires the woman’s outward appearance, there’s no explicitly sexual language, so it looks like the lyrical poem is platonic, friendly, or familial. The speaker doesn’t outwardly express their physical desire to the woman. The speaker’s attraction is more intangible.

About Byron’s outsized life, Frank D. McConnell writes that, in the past, “interest in the man’s personality seemed far to outweigh the interest in the poems themselves” (Byron's Poetry xi). For critics and readers, it can be difficult to separate Byron from the speakers and his dramatic life. The speaker of “She Walks in Beauty” could be Byron—as the poet admired women and their beauty throughout his life—but to understand the poem, it’s not necessary to call the speaker Byron. The speaker says little about themselves since all their attention goes to the beautiful woman.