Compare and contrast the nature of the love described and the way it is presented to the reader in 'The Going' by Thomas Hardy and 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' by J Keats.

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The genre ‘love poetry’ covers a wide range of emotions and relationships. With this in mind, compare and contrast the nature of the love described and the way it is presented to the reader in ‘The Going’ by Thomas Hardy and ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ by J Keats.

The poems ‘The Going’, and ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ both present emotions on a besotten, dismal tone. However, the nature of the love varies somewhat in confidence.

‘The Going’ is a reflective, serious and personal poem. The sudden death of Hardy’s wife, Emma filled this poem with regret and sorrow. After 42 years of true love, Hardy creates emotions, life and irony. He often varies the presentation of these elements by the approach and his use of language.

The poem opens with an ironic question, a question that cannot be answered, ‘why did you give me no hint that night’. Hardy is here reflecting on his wife’s sudden death, perhaps the day following. He is coming to terms with her death, which is indicated by the use of present tense, colloquial tone and the dialogue, which continues throughout the poem. This strengthens the grief and inflicts the emotions and the deep sense of loss onto the audience more immediately. The structure is of the poem is A B A B C C B. Hardy’s sounds and language is often close to nature as like ‘where I could not follow, with wing of swallow.’ The rhyming couplets relate to nature and create a surge of grief.

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The poem continues with a regular structure and regard to nature. In the second stanza, as Hardy is thinking about his activities around the time of her death, ‘Saw morning harden upon the wall, unmoved unknowing, that your great going,’ and to intensify the remorse and images created, he uses alliteration. As the poem progresses and he begins to miss her as the evening develops, the poem works well to the reader as Hardy continues being honest and personal. He proves his love is true when he includes his own faults, ‘unmoved, unknowing,’ and the personal touches, are things ...

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