Lord Byron Essays

Lord Byron Essays Lord Byron Paper Lord Byron Paper 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. â€Å"She Walks in Beauty† and â€Å"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. â€Å"The Destruction of Sennacherib† is also a Hebrew melody in which Byron replicated the measures taken by the Assyrian king Sennacherib to capture Jerusalem. Although these two poems are similar in their use of literary devices, they are vastly different in theme, tone, and context. Literary devices are used by Byron all throughout these two poems. 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. â€Å"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 â€Å"contain opposite forces within her† (Hacht 269). â€Å"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 â€Å"word pictures† to create an incredibly amazing scene so that the destruction of Israel is more evident later in the poem (Napierkowski and Ruby 39). Symbolism is also one of Byron’s chosen literary devices in these two poems. The symbolism seen in these two poems heavily connects with is perspective of life as it is what he leans on to write his poetry (Kelsall 171). In â€Å"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, â€Å"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 â€Å"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, â€Å"in literature . . . the eyes reveal the heart† (269). Although â€Å"She Walks in Beauty† and â€Å"The Destruction of Sennacherib† are both works of Lord Byron, they are different in all sorts of ways; one being theme. The major theme of â€Å"She Walks in Beauty† is quite obviously beauty. In this poem he expresses this woman’s beauty so in depth it almost seems unfathomable. Byron compliments the lightness with darkness in order to compare the woman’s physical beauty and inner beauty (Hacht 270). Howard Needler says in his critique that â€Å"’Beauty† seems problematical from the poem’s opening line, where it literarily denotes an ambience that enfolds the motion of both night and the lady† (19+). This statement takes note that the atmosphere of the poem is split between the beauty of the darkness and the beauty of the women. This issue leads to Kant’s statement in the Critique of Judgment: Two kinds of beauty, free beauty . . . r merely dependent beauty . . . . The first presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; the second does presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance therewith. The first is called the self-subsistent beauty of this or that thing; the second, as dependent upon a concept (conditioned beauty), is ascribed to objects which come under the concept of a part icular purpose. (Qtd. Needler 19+) Looking at the poem with this incite, the light and dark meeting is more of a self-subsistent beauty where the beauty of the woman is more conditioned beauty. Byron makes use of the dark/light comparison in order to try and articulate the beauty of the woman, making the beauty of the woman dependent upon the free beauty of the stars. The theme of death in â€Å"The Destruction of the Sennacherib† is quite different than the eloquent theme of beauty in â€Å"She Walks in Beauty. † Death is the major theme in this poem for two reason; one being the fall of the Assyrian king and his troops and the second being the fall of pagan worship. The soldiers, the horse, and the king all die in respective order throughout the poem. The soldiers, listed first, seem to have the least affect on the poem with their deaths. Next the horse, stronger than any man, has a bit more of an affect as the poem zooms in as his desperate attempts to breathe as he dies. The death of the king had the most affect on his people because the death of him meant the death of paganism. The death of Sennacherib proves that the Christian God is far more powerful than any earthy king ever could be. Sennacherib dying did not only signify the death of the Assyrian king, it also signified the death of the Assyrian culture. A culture, as Mary K. Ruby and Marie Rose Napierkowski would say, â€Å"that worshiped Baal, the beleaguered pagan god of the Old Testament† (40). Yet this poem stands to be fiction because the Assyrian king Sennacherib was murdered by his own flesh and blood (Napierkowski and Ruby 40). â€Å"She Walks in Beauty† and â€Å"The Destruction of Sennacherib† differ in theme but they also differ in tone. The tone of â€Å"She Walks in Beauty† is one of serious nature; Byron is very passionate about this woman and all of her beauty. For this reason, â€Å"She Walks in Beauty† does not have a tone that is extremely flamboyant. Byron focuses on the complexity of this woman as though she is multi-faceted; he is as infatuated with her inner beauty as he is with her physical beauty. Byron notes that â€Å"One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace,† meaning if this woman had one more or one less inquisitive characteristic her whole demeanor would not be that of this perfect being. This idea of â€Å"nameless grace† is brought onto this woman from heaven, which goes along with the expression â€Å"she is graced by beauty. † (Hacht 270). The seriousness of this poem can be seen through Byron’s attempt to overstate the characteristics of this woman both physically and internally in order to create the image of a woman so amazing is the epitome of perfection (Hacht 272).