Merely by glancing at ‘Love’ one would not be able to detect that it was definitely a Christian poem, however I know it must be as Herbert was a rector in Salisbury for the last three years of his life. Rosetti was equally religious, rejecting the man she loved for not sharing her religious beliefs. Despite these similarities, the poets were born almost two hundred and fifty years apart and therefore writing poetry for different audiences.
From reading the poems I find Rosetti’s poetic style tends toward the simple, the language she uses more alike to our modern way of speaking than Herbert’s. While not complicated, ‘Love’ is written in a more ancient, and in some ways more elegant, style of writing. While both flow smoothly in your mind when you read them, ‘Love’ has phrases which are more powerful than those that are found in Rosetti’s poem ‘Love bade me welcome’.
Uphill is the poem of a pilgrim, journeying to reach the inn at the end of life’s toils. This pilgrim is striving for admittance to this inn and though unsure of whether they will be permitted to enter, put all their faith in the promise of a place. The title itself implies a struggle that gets harder and harder but eventually ends. We read the pilgrims worried questions and doubts comforted in a curious question: answer: question: answer format. I liken the pilgrim mentioned in the poem to your soul, battling through life and if worthy, reaching salvation in your ‘travel-sore’ state. Rosetti’s soul seems hesitant and unsure right up to its last line. However the pilgrim’s questions are in no particular order, merely arranged by the worried mind of the pilgrim. In George Herbert’s poem however the poet, believing himself unworthy, is openly welcomed by Love. This is a personification of Christ, obvious when you look down to the last verse ‘And know you not…who bore the blame?’ . This is a clear indication of Christianity from the poem, for only in this religion did God’s son come down from heaven and bear the blame for mankind’s sins. Love comforts the poet each time he voices a doubt that he deserves to be here, questions in an order, the poem ending with Love’s final reassurance and the poet’s grateful acceptance to sit at Love’s side and ‘taste’ Love’s meat.
While in Uphill the pilgrim is contented with their place in heaven, the soul in Love finds an individual meeting with Christ, talking face to face with him, giving a far more personal sense to the poem. ‘Love took my hand’.
One striking difference, evident without even appreciating the words, is that while each line is the end of a sentence in Uphill, there are a few examples of enjambment in Herbert’s poem. Where Herbert has three stanzas each 6 lines long, Rosetti has four stanzas and quatrains, making the two rhyming schemes different. The first line of Uphill’s verse rhymes with the third, while the second rhymes with the fourth line. In Herbert’s poem it works the same except that Love has two extra lines, and the last two lines of Love rhyme. This is what the rhyming scheme of Rosetti and Herbert respectively go like: A-B-A-B and A-B-A-B-C-D. So while both poems strive to depict a religious journey of some kind in as straightforward terms as possible, it is quite obvious that Love is less simple and in my opinion more pleasing to read than Rosetti’s Uphill. Both have beauty yet Herbert’s seems more elegant in its complicity, Uphill being almost so simplistic as to call it a child’s bedtime story. I favour Love as a more refined poem, finding it more pleasing to read than Uphill, with more details and charming phrases.
