She walks on beauty

The poem represents an attempt to define personal beauty as a multi-faceted phenomenon constituted by far more than mere physical attractiveness. From a third-person speaker’s point of view, the headline and the first line of the first stanza present a thesis stating a woman’s beauty. Taking the introductory statement as a starting-point the speaker circumscribes this particular beauty by means of comparison and collects evidence in support of the statement. In the course of the poem a variety of facets are added to the beauty stated initially. In particular, metaphors have the function to paraphrase and illustrate aspects of beauty; as rhetorical devices they help to avoid a repetition of relevant features, which would make the speaker’s observations and argumentation appear much less credible or convincing. Within the range of criteria and categories chosen by the author, careful gradation of aspects has an important function; yet do most of the images avoid too limited definitions (e.g. of exact colour), thus leaving scope for the reader’s imagination.
structure
(1) stating of personal beauty; comparison (natural phenomena); gradation of visual elements (best of dark and bright, tender light) attributed to whole outward appearance (aspect) and eyes. (2) grace as a physical phenomenon attributed to hair (tress) and face; link with spiritual aspect (thoughts). (3) emotional «effect» («inter-personal» aspect: smiles … win); emotional state (goodness, peace, love), moral state (goodness, innocent); physical and spiritual aspects: cheek, brow, mind, heart.

point of view
The use of a third-person point of view seems to lend more credibility to the speaker’s observations and more objectivity to his judgement. *1*Whether the speaker reports, or only guesses at, the woman’s thoughts etc. remains open (cf. the concept of «limited omniscience»; *2*); at no point intimate details are exposed (e.g. as to what or where the dwelling-place in (2,6) is). As a consequence, both a certain degree of detachment is maintained – as an indispensable element of «objective» judgement – and the reader is free to use his or her own imagination at many points (s.a.).
grammar/syntax
Note the potential grammatical discord of subject + verb in (1): all that’s best of dark and bright [/] meet; there are the following explanations: principle of «proximity»: grammatical subject = dark and bright + plural verb?; notional concord: various aspects matter, thus plural verb; less probable: meet = subjunctive expressing possibility, assumption etc.).
Fitting in with the subject/theme of the text (judgement on beauty; statement + evidence + conclusion; s.a.) coordinate and subordinate sentence/clause types are used which, according to their functions, are frequently found in argumentative texts. Here, distinguishable functions are (conjunctions, type, etc. in parentheses): enumeration (copulative and, throughout the text, disjunctive or (2); without connectors in the form of incomplete sentence patterns in (3, 5-6)); exemplification (prep. or conj. like, (1)); conclusion (consecutive Thus, (1)); definition (relative pronoun Which (1), (2)); contrast (or, s.a.; comparative structure the … the…(2)); adversative yet, (3)). Each stanza is a syntactic unit consisting of various sentence/clause types.

http://www.englishromantics.com/rom_analyses4.htm#beauty



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