However, in the poem ‘First Love’ the poet John Clare captures the sensation s of falling in love in a different way. As he sees someone who he falls in love with he describes his sensation with things that happen to his body. For example when he sees here he says ‘My face turned pale as deadly pale. My legs refused to walk away.’ He uses these reactions to show his sensation of love.
In the two poems ‘How do I love thee?’ and ‘A Birthday’ there is different types of love in the poetry. In ‘How do I love thee?’ the sensation of love being described by Elizabeth Browning is being in love with somebody, using her different techniques she says how she loves this person. However, in the poem ‘A Birthday’ by Christina Rosetti she is describing a different type of love. She is describing the type of love of an event. The event she loves is the birthday (hence the title) and by using different examples she describes how she loves this event.
Elizabeth Browning shows and explains her love for the person by first asking a question and then answering. It start ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, I love thee to the depth and breadth and height, My soul can reach’. This phrase shows what type of love the poet is showing, because of the beginning which says ‘How do I love thee?’ this obviously shows that the type of love she is feeling is love for someone else. This point is supported by the words ‘I love thee’ being repeatedly used. She goes on to answer the question, which is a rhetorical question, with her answer; ‘I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach’. She describes her love using a measurement. I think, from this passage, ‘I love thee with the breath, Smiles and tears of all my life; and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death’, it shows that it makes the poet Elizabeth Browning feel overwhelmed and emotional with her love. I think this because the fact that she says she will love him after death, it means that she will have everlasting love for him. I think this statement would make the poet feel extremely emotional.
However, Christina Rosetti’s type of love in the poem ‘A Birthday’ is very different compared to ‘How do I love thee?’. In the poem ‘A Birthday’ Christina Rosetti is describing her love for a birthday, these two passage describe her love very well – ‘My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot;’ and at the end of the poem after listing many descriptions of love, ‘Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.’ She describes her ‘love’ very well by using a singing bird nesting in a watered shoot to describe her love. Using the singing bird is very good because singing is usually related to being happy or being a sign of happiness, and also the fact that the bird is nesting in a nice area, a watered shoot, is a sign of happiness. Both of these things, the bird and its nest relate to Christina Rosetti’s love very well, however at this point you would not be able to tell what type of love she is describing. It is not until the end of the poem when she says ‘Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.’ That it becomes clear that all through the poem she was describing her love of the even of her birthday, not anything else for example and object or person, like in ‘How do I love thee?’
Although these two poems are about two different types of love they still have some similarities for example both of the poems are similar in the way that the have only one stanza. Also the are similar in tow more ways, the first way is that they are both describing love in general and they are also the same in the way that in the poems both poets have listed ways to describe their love.
Although these poems have these things in common, they are still very different in more ways, The first way is that although each poems is only one stanza, ‘How do I love thee?’ has got 14 lines, making it a sonnet poem, whereas ‘A Birthday’ has 16 lines, making a long stanza, but not a sonnet. This is because all sonnet poems have to have 14 lines.
Another main way in which the poems are very different is that they are both describing totally different types of loves. ‘How do I love thee?’ is written to describe the love of a person, compared to ‘A Birthday’ which is describing an event. Although the poems are both about love and the sensations of love, they are talking about different types, I think this is more of a difference than a similarity.
Apart from the fact they are talking about different types of love, the poets both go about completely different ways of describing love. For example, ‘Howe do I love thee?’ describes love using measurements e.g. ‘I love thee to the length and breadth and height’ and also ‘I love thee to the level of every day’. This is compared to the completely different way Christina Rosetti uses to describe her love in ‘A Birthday’. In this poem she uses objects and living things to describe her love, such as ‘My heart is like a singing bird’ and ‘My heart is lie a rainbow shell’. I think this is the most significant way in which the poems are different – the way the love is described.
Another different type of love, and description of love is expressed very will in Christina Walsh’s poem ‘A woman to her lover’ The type of love she describes in this poem is of sexual desire. This sexual desire type of love is different to the other two poems because it is a different type of love, but it is also different because the way in which it is described is different compared to ‘How do I love thee?’ where love is described in measurement, and also different to ‘A Birthday’ which is described using objects and other living things. The poem ‘A woman to her lover’ describes love using feelings, touching and describing he body. For example, ‘my skin soft only for your fond caresses’, this is describing love in a way of temptation, she is describing her body for the man to touch, I think for describing this type of sexual love, this methods of describing is the most powerful, from comparing these three poems’ descriptions of love, I believe that with the different types of love comes a different description of the temptation.
In lots of poems the poets try and explain their love changing, they may start off the poem with a positive view on their love, however they may finish off their poem with a negative or changed opinion on their love. In ‘How do I love thee?’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and ‘A Birthday’ by Christina Rosetti, the poets’ love has not changed through the poem. In both of the poems the poets start off with positive views on their love for different things and also end with positive views. Rather than describe how the poets’ loves have changes, both the poets quantify their love and show this sensation through descriptive writing and similes.
As it can be seen from this analysis, much of the poetry written prior to the 19th Century was devoted to many types of love, both the sensations and feelings related to this subject, and also the poet attempting to capture in writing how the feeling of being in love has changed him or her both for better and for worse. In the case of the poets discussed here, it is obvious that for those poets, love was experienced as both a burden and an inspiration, as something to long for, and as something to resist. Regardless it is obvious that for these poets, love did serve to change them forever.
