This poem shows both positive and negative aspects of love. The poem shows how, on the surface, love is beautiful and good, but if you look deeper it is more negative. “Stole my heart away complete” gives the impression love a desirable state to be in. John Clare also refers to music, “They spoke as chordes from a string,” suggesting love is good and beautiful as music is. He also describes pain, “Blood burnt round my heart” and self-consciousness “blood rushed to my face.” He also questions love, giving the impression it will not last.
However, “Shall I compare thee…” has a positive tone. It is a Shakespearean sonnet. Unlike “First Love”, throughout the poem Shakespeare is comparing his love. He asks if he should compare her to a summer’s day, because summer is bright, happy and beautiful and he thinks this of his loved one. However, a summer’s day has faults, unlike her. “Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”
Shakespeare goes on to state summers imperfections. “Sometimes too hot”. Shakespeare says, “every fair from fair sometimes declines.” He means that nothing good can last; everything withers with age, except her. He implies summer is not perfect enough to compare her to.
This poem is an obvious tribute to his love. It is more complex than “First Love”. But, lie “First Love” Shakespeare uses personification, “often his gold complexion is dimmed.” Here he is describing the sun as a man.
The poet says she will never lose her beauty, “Nor- lose possession of that fair thou owst.” He also says she will remain perfect forever, she is not weak like summer, “But thy eternal summer shall not fade.” She will not lose her beauty because she has been immortalised in the poem.
Shakespeare uses many poetic techniques to show summers imperfections and highlight how his love is perfect. He uses the image of the sun being an eye, “Too hot the eye of heaven shines.”
He also uses repetition of the phrase, “so long” in the concluding couplet to emphasize that her beauty will last forever. He says “When eternal lines to time thou growst,” he is saying she remain captured in time because of the poem. When he says “this” he refers to the poem the poem commits her beauty to time.
Throughout this poem Shakespeare implies summer is a poor comparison with his love. “Shall I compare thee…” shows love in a very different way to “First Love”. Firstly, the themes of love in the poems are different. The themes of “Shall I compare thee…” are love, beauty and the power of the poem to celebrate and immortalise it.
“The Sunne Rising” has a very different tone. The first verse has an angry, critical, dramatic tone. The poet is very argumentative; he is almost picking a fight with the sun, as if he resents it. John Donne uses a lot of hyperbole, to emphasize his love for her, and to shoe how she is everything that is important and that only she matters nothing else. For example he says, “She’s is all states,” implying she is everything.
The poem has a fairly simple structure. The poem uses perfect rhyme. There is a rhyming scheme of ABBACDCDEE.
In the first verse the poet uses personification to describe the sun, “Busie old foole” as if the sun is interfering. He is criticising the sun, as if he wants a fight, “Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?”
The effect of the language in the opening lines makes it seem as if he is challenging the sun, “Why dost thou thus through windowes, and through curtains call on us?”. He seem to resent the sun and wishes it to be anywhere else, “sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide late schoole boys.” He gives images of people he thinks deserve to be woken up. He is abusing the sun, as if telling it to go and tell someone else off because he wants to stay with his loved one but the sun is interfering. He says, “Call country ants to harvest” this gives the image of different people going to work. Everyone else is busy- they want to be left to peace. He asks is the sun should dictate the time they have together, “Must to thy motions lovers season run?” At the end of the verse he says their love is beyond time, “Love, all alike, no season knows.” He says time is insignificant, compared to their love, “they are rags of time,” by this he refers to parts of cloths that are not important just as time is not relevant to them.
At the beginning of ht second verse the poet suggests that the suns strength is overrated, “I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,” he could overcome the “might” of the sun by just closing his eyes. “But that I would not lose her sight so long.” However, then he would not be able to see his love. This is hyperbole.
He also uses a hyperbolic idea when he says “Indias of spice”. He suggests that the sun will find that all of the riches of eternal world lie with the poet. The tone of the second stanza is very different from that of the first. He now says that the sun should not leave, that everything exotic in the world is with them, “All there in my bed lay.” This expresses the strength of their love. E uses hyperbole to suggest that they are the world.
The poet says, she is everything, the heart of the world is with her, nothing else matters. “She is all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is.” He uses hyperbole here, to express the strength of his feelings. “To warme the world is done in warming us” this is a hyperbolic idea, implying that their love is everything, they are the world.
Throughout the poem John Donne uses hyperbole to great effect. He exaggerates certain aspects of the sunrise to put emphasise on his love. He uses it to show how strong his feelings of love for her are. He shows how much her love means to him.
In all three of the poems love is their basis. All present strong feelings of love. In “First Love” it is a new experience for him and the impact is immediate.
“Shall I compare thee…” is complimenting his love throughout the poem, showing how much he loves her and how her beauty will last forever because of the poem.
In the “Sunne Rising” John Donne uses hyperbole to show the strength of his feelings and emphasize his feelings for her.
All of the poems present the theme of love well. In my opinion “Shall I compare thee…” shows his feelings for her in a more obvious way, because he shows how summer is inferior to his love. The other two poems use different techniques to great effect, but I believe that, although the other poems are effective tributes to love, Shakespeare’s poem presents the theme of love the best.
