Which British Romantic wrote 'She Walks in Beauty'?

• A. Keats
• B. Wordsworth
• C. Byron
• D. Coleridge

Answer: (C)

In Romantic lyric poetry, authors often celebrate beauty and inner emotion through compact, musical lines. This poem is a quintessential Byron work, famous for praising a woman’s beauty by blending light and dark imagery—“like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies” and “all that’s best of dark and of bright.” The concise form, graceful rhythm, and focus on personal impression—the emotional response to beauty—are all hallmarks of Byron’s style. Lord Byron, a leading figure of the era, is the poet most associated with this piece.

Other prominent Romantic voices—Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge—each wrote in distinct directions: Wordsworth turned to humble nature and daily experience, Keats pursued lush, sensuous odes and vivid imagery, and Coleridge explored imagination and the supernatural. But this particular poem is attributed to Byron.