Would you call this then a poem about love? Love lasts forever, no matter what situation you are in, no matter what difficulties you have. The ones who love you are and will always be there for you whenever they are needed. The young mistress, in this poem, is sorrowful, regretting having fallen in love with this betrayer. She is heartbroken, and, it seems, will not have the courage to love ever again. This stranger has broken her heart completely so that it is impossible to heal. The man has stolen her heart as well as her virginity, leaving her in tears alone with her baby in a state of disgrace. In those days, every man would know that if he took a woman’s virginity, he would also be stealing her future. The shepherd is portrayed as both cruel and ruthless because he steals the speaker’s most precious treasure. We cannot therefore think of this as a love poem. Rather, this is a poem about betrayal.
The language of this poem is used to suit the sad emotion of the speaker. She associates summer as the happy moment in her relationship and winter as the time when she experienced not the loss of her virginity. The darkness and coldness of the winter link with her sorrow. We are given a powerful image to describe her hopes We have this strong image of how she was promised. ‘He promise beds as fine as silk and sheets for love as white as milk’ but in contrast ‘ I’ve made thy pillow on a thorn’. These images are very effective as they just opposite as the others. The repetition of ‘regret’ suggests how regretting the mistress and it sticks on our head as we read, as if the writer is trying to warn us to think ahead before acting. The constant speed and the rhyming of ‘Ballad’ make the poem very memorable.
Moving on to ‘To his coy mistress’. While the mistress is still reluctant to sleep with the writer, the man is trying every single way that he can think of to win her over. First he makes all the wonderful promises, exaggerating them, impressing the lady. For examples, he claims, ‘I would love you ten years before the flood, and you should, if you pleased, refuse till the conversion of the Jews.’ This line is similar to the ‘promising’ statement in ‘Ballad’ when the shepherd says he will give the girl ’beds as fine as silk, and sheets for love as white as milk’. These were probably the sweet words and honeyed phrases that were told to the lady in ‘Ballad’ before the losing her virginity.
No actual actions take place in ‘To his coy mistress’. All he says is if he had time, he would wait forever, which is impossible. The poem also suggests that the man is more interested in the woman physically than in her intelligence, and her character. He would spend an hundred years ‘to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze, two hundred to adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest’. If it is pure love the man is seeking, he would not mention her breast but her soul and the beauty she has.
‘Thy beauty shall no more be found, nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try that long preserved virginity’.
In these lines he is using another way to persuade the lady to sleep with him.This time he uses images to frighten her, asking her not to save herself, as her beauty will not last for long. We can tell clearly what this man really wants. Should you not love everything and every part of your lover? Why would he care about her appearance if he were in love? He also persuades the woman to ‘sport’ with him. Sport. What does this relationship of love means to him? A game, which can be finished without taking any responsibility? This is poem not of love, but of sex and seduction. The lady in ‘To his coy mistress’ might probably end up as the mistress in ‘Ballad’. ‘Ballad’ could be the sequel of ‘To his coy mistress’.
‘My last duchess’ is a different style of poem. It is very cleverly written and suits the character of the speaker very well, in that it moves forward without interruption as if he cannot tolerate being contradicted. The way the Duke dismisses the servants suggests that he is in charge of them. This poem rhymes without the reader noticing and being aware of it, for example, on the first four lines, I did not notice the endings’ on the wall’ and ‘I call’ rhymes when I first read this poem, which again tell us the dominating character of the writer.
Although this poem is still not about love, at least sex is not what the man wants. Instead, the Duke is obsessed with taking control of his last duchess. He is extremely jealous when seeing his wife treats him in the same way as she does others. His duchess is easily satisfied. This is actually a good quality in her, but he accuses her of being faithless. The duke complains that his wife is ’ too easy impressed; she liked whate’er she looked on’. He is jealous that his wife is impressed by other people particularly other men and their gifts such as ‘the bough of cherries’.
The duke ‘gave commands; then all the smiles stopped together.’ He is turning his duchess into his possession by sending her to death. The painting has replaced his wife, and the duke is satisfied now, as he owns his duchess by turning her into an object, in order to have total power over her.
Not only does the Duke see his last duchess as his possession, but also his future wife as this. Towards the end of the poem he mentions the ‘dowry will be disallowed; though his fair daughter’s self ‘ What is he really after? The fair daughter or the dowry?
Of these three poems, none is about love, but ‘Ballad’ is based on love. It is a poem of the pure love that the innocent maiden had for a cunning beast, a love that no longer exists. ‘To his coy mistress’ is about the spurious love a man has for a woman in order to win her to bed. ‘Ballad’ is what might happen once a young girl’s viginity is lost. In ‘My last duchess’, nothing about love is mentioned except for the woman’s love of life. All it deals with is jealousy and the domination over woman by the fastidious duke.
These poems show the bad aspects of love. They could be about love in a way, as love is a complicated matter. It can mean different things to every individual. It is crucial to think about the consequences before we love, as loving can end up badly, just as it did for the young woman in ‘Ballad’.
I found ‘Ballad’ very effective, as it is a warning. It warns us to think ahead before loving, before ending up like her. By telling us about her own experiences, it makes the poem more personal as if we as readers are in the same situation. The feeling of hopelessness is so strong and powerful that it touches us. The language in the poem is also very direct and simple but expressive. The girl expresses herself unreservedly, with deep, touching emotions, whereas in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and ‘My last Duchess’, none of the speakers express any genuinely positive emotion.
Many young woman in that period would have been warned against the same hopeless situation. ‘Ballad’’ is about love, the kind of love that makes us suffer, the tragic love, but a poem that alerts young women to predicaments, which can occur even now.
