The author of ‘When We Two Parted,’ Lord Byron, had a very different life however, he grew up with his mother, who was a rich woman but her fortune was then squandered by her husband. He inherited his title from an Uncle and his mother used the money to give him a good education.
In 1815, he married a woman named Anne Isabella Milbanke, but the relationship soon ended the following year. He then met Countess Teresa Guiccioli who later became his mistress. I think it is these two main relationships that make Lord Byron the author he is. It looks as though he still holds a certain bitterness towards them as it begins to comes out in the poem. “When we two parted, in silence and tears,” the first two lines of the poem already begin to show a sign of sadness. It sounds very emotional, as though he may be heartbroken yet still very bitter and resentful. This already shows a big contrast between the two poems as in one of them, it talks of wanting to hold onto love, whilst the other is talking of how it was when that love ended.
Further down in ‘First Love,’ it says “My face turned pale as deadly pale”, this reminds me of a ghostly figure. Somebody who is no longer in control of their own actions, or emotions, these are also some physical affects of love; the sense of being paralysed by love, with the one you love being dominant.
In the 5th line down from ‘When We Two Parted’ it also mentions loves physical effects. “Pale grew they cheek and cold” It is as though the love he had for this woman/women has turned to stone almost, has become cold, stiff, deadly. His feelings are dying which goes with the idea of being pale, again, it is reminiscent of death.
This idea continues throughout both poems until the last verse of each. In the first poem (First Love) the last two lines talk of loss, “My heart has left its dwelling place, And can return no more.” I think that this is a way of saying she’s got him under her spell, as though losing his feelings and control of himself was minor, now she has taken his heart from where it was to where it is now, with her. He has almost made her, his home, never to return back to himself. This woman has changed the course of his life by just being there, just by having him fall in love with her.
Once again, the second poem, “When we two parted” shows things from a different perspective, throughout the last verse, it mentions betrayal and the fact that his heart cannot forget what she has done, again, there is a feeling of bitterness and resentment towards this/these woman/women. The last two lines “How should I greet thee? - With silence and tears” proves his true feelings. He is not able to completely forget those feelings. Although they have hardened and grown colder and perhaps even more sour, if they were to meet there would still be a feeling of loss.
These are the many differences between the two poems, there are also some similarities such as the use of rhetorical questions, in First Love, near the end of the poem, it asks “Is love’s bed always snow?” they are asking what is next, when they have over-come the initial feeling of their first love, as if asking what will happen. The snow at the end of the sentence signifies purity, something that is pure is also untainted, like a First Love, it has never before been touched, it is a first time which goes back to the title of the poem. This is also the same for When We Two parted. The poem starts by saying how this couple would meet in future years, then at the end, it returns to this idea with a rhetorical question, “After long years, how should I greet thee?” The ‘long years’ seems to make the idea of meeting once again more scary perhaps, so much may have changed, may now be tainted. This is the opposite to First Love where the feelings between them were untainted.
They both mention physical effects of love as well as alliteration to emphasise the authors feelings. For example, in First Love ‘With love so sudden and so sweet’ this outlines the ‘s’ sound which emphasizes the sweetness of the love as ‘s’ is a very soft sound. The same idea is used in When We Two Parted, ‘Pale grew thy cheek and cold’ this emphasizes the coldness as the ‘C’ sound is quite sharp, hard and cold.
Throughout First Love, hyperboles are used to exaggerate the way this person is feeling, for instance ‘Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower’ obviously, a face cannot bloom, but he is trying to say that she is like nature, beautiful in its own way, unique like a flower. This is true also for When We Two Parted, ‘Half-broken hearted’ peoples hearts cannot actually break in two so this is another hyperbole.
So to come to a conclusion, although the two poems are about two different themes, one on love, one on loss, they both have many similarities, they just have different meanings.