analysis of "when we two parted" by John Keats

The first 200 words of this essay...

When We Two Parted

By Lord Byron

Lord Byron was a romantic poet who introduced the "Byronic hero" to literature through his poems. The poem "When We Two Parted", a personal account of grief and sorrow was written on parting with a loved one and later being burdened with the sorrow of betrayal.

The first line of the poem, "When we two parted" is also the title of the poem. Perhaps this is because the grief felt by the poet at parting was so intense that he chose to leave the words as they were and didn't bother with thinking of a title. The pronoun "we" is used by the poet to make the reader enter into the shoes of the character and share the same feelings of intense grief and sorrow experienced by the poet/character, as if it were his own. The fact that they part in "silence and tears " tells us that the grief they felt was so heavy that they themselves found words unworthy of expressing it and the phrase "silence and tears" is used to express the depth of their grief as well. They part with only half broken hearts as in