She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes…

These lines open “She Walks in Beauty”, the first poem of Byron’s Hebrew Melodies. The woman’s beauty is compared not to the day but to a clear, starry night: dark and bright meet in her face and eyes, “mellow’d to that tender light / Which heaven to gaudy day denies”. One shade more, one ray less, the next stanza says, and her “nameless grace” would be half impaired. The last stanza moves from face to soul: her smiles “tell of days in goodness spent”, a mind at peace, “A heart whose love is innocent!”

Hebrew Melodies, published in 1815, was a collaboration with the composer Isaac Nathan, who set Byron’s poems to music; most of them treat biblical subjects, but not this one. The poem is said to have been inspired by the sight of Mrs Wilmot, the wife of Byron’s cousin, at a party, in a black mourning dress spangled with sequins: an image of the dark and bright that it celebrates.

She Walks in Beauty (Hebrew Melodies), first stanza, 1815

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