The theme of the poem is again complimenting a woman, comparing her beauty to the beauty of nature. Shakespeare even goes a step further by saying ‘And summer’s lease has all too short a date’ and then ‘But thy eternal summer shall not fade.’ He is saying that even the beauty of summer does not last forever, but the woman’s beauty shall never be forgotten. He says he will immortalise her within his poem; ‘When in eternal lines to time thou growest’. Shakespeare not only wrote this poem to allure a woman, like Marlowe did, but also to record her image so it would never be forgotten.
Sonnet 18, unsurprisingly, is a sonnet and follows the customary sonnet form; fourteen lines, each of ten syllables, with a rhyming couplet at the end. The rhyming couplet traditionally concludes the poem, or rounds up the overall meaning of the poem into two lines. Sonnet 18 follows this rule by saying:
‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.’
The main point of this sonnet is to conserve the woman’s beauty within the lines of the poem, and the rhyming couplet confirms this.
Another feature of sonnets is that often the first eight lines are focused on one point, then after the eighth line there is a change in atmosphere. Sonnet 18 is no exception. For the first eight lines Shakespeare tells the reader that no beauty lasts forever, and all good things eventually come to an end; ‘And every fair from fair sometimes declines.’ However, the mood then changes and Shakespeare goes on to say that the woman’s beauty will never fade, it will be eternally preserved within the lines of the poem.
Shakespeare uses personification to describe death; “Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade.” This is used really to add dramatic effect to the poem. Had Shakespeare just said “Nor shall you die”, the effect wouldn’t have been nearly so poignant. By personifying death, death becomes a tangible object, a person, and this increases the sense of menace to dying. It makes Shakespeare sound like he’s saved the woman from a far worse fate than mere death.
The rhyme scheme is a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,e,f,e,f,g,g; like A Passionate Shepherd, it has a very set form. The language is still quite rich, although not as rich as A Passionate Shepherd.
The main reasons Shakespeare wrote the poem was to declare his love for the woman and also to make sure she and her beauty were remembered forever. He also probably hoped that she would have been so flattered by his poem that she would have fallen in love and married him.
About two hundred years later, in the Romantic period, Robert Burns wrote O My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose. There is a sense of loss to the lyric, as Burns is saying farewell to his love, rather than trying to make her fall in love with her, like the previous two poems.
Burns’ poem is very simple, and there isn’t that much to analyse, but he does use a couple of similes; of course, “O, my luve’s like a red, red rose” and also “O, my luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly played in tune.” Both these describe how deeply in love he is.
O My Luve also contains pastoral imagery; “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear” and “And the rocks melt wi’ the sun!” Pastoral imagery was still quite popular in the Romantic period, although not as much as it was in the Renaissance.
There are four stanzas each of four lines, and there is an alternating pattern of eight syllables in the first line, followed by six in next line, except in verse three where the pattern of syllables changes slightly; where there should have been six syllables, there are seven. This is probably for a change in pace, to make the poem less monotonous. Poets were beginning to use freer verse, rather than set verse.
The rhyme scheme is a,b,c,b and this pattern runs throughout the poem. However, in verse three, the end word on lines one and three is the same, ‘Dear’, so this could possibly change the rhyme scheme, depending on how you look at it. The same goes for stanza four, where the repeated word is ‘Luve’.
The reason Burns wrote the poem was probably to console the woman he had to leave, and to reassure her that he would return. He might have also written it to try and redeem himself, if the woman was angry at him for leaving.
Later in the Romantic period, John Clare wrote First Love. Poetry had moved on a little from pastoral imagery by then, but John Clare still uses some links to nature. The fact that John Clare worked as a labourer in the fields when young might have affected his poetic approach to nature and brought more reality to his work than earlier pastoral poems. This poem is also different in the fact that it doesn’t speak directly to the subject, Clare writes much more about his feelings than the previous three poems do, which are more intent on actually luring the woman to them. First Love is more introspective.
Another difference in this poem is that it implies that Clare does not succeed in winning the woman over. In the previous poems the implication is that the poet will get or has got the woman, but in First Love the insinuation is that his attempts are unsuccessful;
“Are flowers the winter’s choice?
Is love’s bed always snow?”
These are melancholy images rather than happy ones, and the suggestion is that the woman would not accept him; his love was cold. There are other lines which suggest failure; “My life and all seemed turn to clay.” This could mean that, like clay, his life could crumble at any time, which is what might happen if he was rebuffed. Another line, “And blood burnt round my heart,” shows that perhaps Clare is in pain; love makes you happy, because you’re in love, but if faced with rejection love is also very painful.
Clare uses a lot of similes and metaphors; “Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower,” is another link to nature, and shows that she was very beautiful. “My face turned pale as deadly pale,” could also be another link to his failure, as if he died inside after he was rejected. “Words from my eyes did start: They spoke as chords do from the string,” is a more romantic way of saying that when he saw her he couldn’t speak, but probably stood there staring at her with his mouth open for a few minutes. These metaphors and similes increase the sense of romance in the poem.
Unlike Sonnet 18, A Passionate Shepherd and O My Luve, First Love focuses on the physical symptoms of falling in love; “My legs refused to walk away,” and “the blood rushed to my face And took my sight away.” First Love, therefore, could be viewed as a poem about love in general, and as it tends to recall what has happened in the past it is less immediate than the feelings Shakespeare and Marlowe raise in their poems.
Clare uses personification in the final two lines;
“My heart has left its dwelling place
And can return no more.”
He makes his heart sound almost like a conscious being, which symbolises how strong and real his love is, even if he did face rejection.
The poem has a sing-song, almost childish form, which could suggest the vulnerability of the poet. There are three stanzas, each of eight lines, and the rhyme scheme is a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d per stanza.
It is unlikely Clare wrote the poem to try to appeal to the woman, seeing as she had already rejected him; he could have written it so he could share his sorrow with the world. It is like a lament rather than something which looks forward, like Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s poems. Whatever the reason, Clare’s poetry was not terribly popular with the people of that time, and he descended into dejected depression before being admitted to an asylum for the mentally insane. He once managed to escape, and attempted to walk the eighty miles back to his home, living off grass.
About one hundred years later in the Victorian period, Christina Walsh wrote A Woman to Her Lover. Its theme is entirely different from the previous four poems. For one thing there is absolutely no pastoral imagery, but that is not the only reason it is so dramatically different. Whereas the other four poems were all about undying love and adoration, and trying to claim a love, Walsh has an entirely different point of view. In her poem she is rebuking her lover, and telling him that she will not be his slave or possession.
In verse one she says that she doesn’t want to be a common housewife, expected to raise children and do the washing; “Do you come to bend me to your will… To bear your children, wearing out my life.” She doesn’t want to be a servant, some lifeless object programmed to follow orders.
In verse two she continues on the same tangent. She says that she doesn’t want to be worshipped or set on a pedestal; “Or if you think to wed with one of heaven sent… A wingless angel who can do no wrong.” She is saying that she isn’t perfect and doesn’t want to be treated as if she is. She doesn’t want to have pressure put on to her to be something different from the way she really is.
In verse three, she says that she doesn’t want to be just an object there to satisfy his sexual desires; “Or if you think in me to find A creature who will have no greater joy Than gratify your clamorous desires.” She is saying that sexual pleasure isn’t all there is to life, and she won’t be treated as a courtesan.
Throughout the first three verses she uses quite violent language; “Do you come to bend me to your will As conqueror to the vanquished”, “If that be what you ask, fool, I refuse you!” and “Oh shame, and pity and abasement.” She won’t just ask nicely, she is making absolutely sure that he knows what she wants and will abide by it.
However, in verse four the tone changes completely. She now is saying what she does want, rather than what she doesn’t; “But Lover, if you ask of me That I shall be your comrade, friend, and mate… Then husband, I am yours forever.” She wants equality, with both her and her lover viewing each other as the same. Christina Walsh would have thought of the earlier poems mentioned, written by men, as if they were unrealistically worshipping the women they were writing about.
A Woman to Her Lover is free verse; there is no rhyme scheme, no set amount of lines per stanza, and no set amount of syllables per line. This signifies that she wants to be a free woman, and she is expressing her desire through her poetry. For the Victorian period was also the beginning of the suffragette movement, when women decided it was time they were treated coequal to men. However, whereas some people view the suffragettes as women who wanted men as no more than friends, this was not the case with Christina Walsh; in the final verse she speaks of ‘passion’, ‘joy’ and ‘love’, so she does not only want to be his friend but his lover too.
There are no similes, metaphors or personification. This could be because Walsh wants her poem to be as real and true as possible; she’s not trying to make it sound romantic or syrupy, she’s just telling it like it is. However, she does use one example of alliteration, “wakened woman”. This emphasises the two words, and she probably did this because the entire poem is about women waking up and fighting for their rights, so it is an important two words.
The message she is trying to get across wasn’t just aimed at her lover, but at all the men and women who read it; she was saying that equality is the only way to live, and if you were a man you had to accept it and if you were a woman you had to fight for it.
In conclusion: love poetry comes in many shapes and forms. There have been a number of different ideas, styles and forms throughout the five poems I have studied. The early love poems used pastoral idylls and imagery. The understanding of nature was considered of great importance then, and it conjured beautiful images. People were a lot more religious four hundred years ago and their interest in nature was also due to a craving for the lost Garden of Eden; if you likened your lover to a summer’s day, you were associating her with something heavenly, and in so doing elevating her from the normal. By the time of Christina Walsh’s poem people were no longer so religious, and pastoral imagery was not as important as it had been. Women were rebelling against the way men treated them, and this meant that the kind of imagery used in earlier years was less acceptable. These poems show how love poetry changed over the years, from romantic to realistic.
