The second poem “Birthday” presents love as an overall joyous experience. The poem was written in the 19th century and is a one sided poem in that it displays no negative feelings towards love. For example in the first stanza Rossetti says, “My heart is like a singing bird,” “My heart is like an apple tree,” “My heart is like a rainbow shell.” The poet talks about how she wants “dais of silk”, “down”, “vair”, “purple dyes” and pomegranates” which suggest not only does love make you feel like a queen but love should be expressed and celebrated through expensive and exotic textures. The title, “A Birthday” plays a significant role in presenting love as a joyous experience. I feel the title reads “Birthday” because we relate birthdays to happy times, of celebration and new life so I feel she is probably trying to tell the reader how this was the day she met her love, this was the day her life truly began hence “Birthday.” The last two lines of this poem “Because the birthday of my life is come, my love is come to me.” This essentially is trying to justify why she wants such exotic and expensive textures, because the love of her life is like all the parties and gifts are all in one, in him and so she feels so good and like a queen.
The third poem “To the Ladies” is almost totally opposite to the poem “Birthday”. The poem was written in the 17th century and Chudleigh shows a real desire to get across to women why they should not marry, “Wife and servant are the same”, “Like mutes, she signs alone must make”, “But still governed by the nod”. Chudleigh also describes marriage as “The fatal knot” and “That wretched state”. There is no direct reference to love in this poem and I feel this is because Chudleigh feels love is not true; there is no such thing as love. Mary Chudleigh is telling the reader that women are the property of their husband, “Him still must serve, him still obey.” Chudleigh has written this poem as if she has gone through the whole experience of having to “Obey”, “Serve”, “Fear” and having no “Freedom”. She can only make “Signs”, “Act” and “Speak” only with husband permission and so she wants no other woman to go through this experience. The reason on why I feel Chudleigh is significantly putting across the point that woman are being treated by men so unfairly is because woman in that period of time were essentially treated like second class citizens compared to men when they got married to them.
The poem, “The Song of Wandering Aengus” which was written in the 19th century, is a more complicated and sophisticated poem. The presentation of the experience of love is this poem is not shown through it being either good or bad but more a passion and a desire which must be fulfilled. For example the narrator says “I will find out where she has gone”. He seems also to be obsessed with this woman and so presents love to almost poison your mind and transfix you on what you think to be your ideal love.
The fifth poem “First Love” which was written in the 19th century conveys the narrator’s first love to be one of mixed emotions. For instance Claire mentions words such as, “Struck”, “Stole” and “Deadly”, and the word “Ail”, which are all thought of being words that may have two meanings to it, it may be happy or sad. For instance the word “Struck” on its own may seem to be quiet physical and even painful and so gives the impression of being not such a pleasant experience. However when put into the context of “I ne’er was struck before that hour with love so sudden and so sweet,” it seems here that Clair is presenting this word at which first seems negative into a powerful positive impression, as the word “Stuck” gives the reader a feeling of how beautiful this woman was and so he was not able to move because he was admiring the sight. Even though we get these words which cannot be completely branded as negative words we do get phrases that emphasise how love is a great feeling to experience. Phrases such as “I never saw so sweet a face,” “With love so sudden and sweet” and “Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower.” These phrases all seem to be positive because they are describing the experience of love as a good one. However there is some contradiction shown by the Clair against his own positive thoughts, “is love’s bed always snow,” which suggest love can be cold. So the poem first love is one with many variations of the experience of love, the poem almost says love is a good, cold, happy and even a sad experience.
