Compare and contrast how two or more poets approach the theme of love.

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GCSE Literature Assignment - Pre- 1900 Poetry  Compare and contrast how two or more poets approach the theme of love.   I have chosen the poems;- "Ballad", "Porphyria's Lover" and "Shall I compare thee..?" to compare and contrast. "Ballad" was written during the time that most people were illiterate, leaving it to be passed on by mouth, which left it without an author. It describes a dishonest love, where someone feels betrayed by their lover. "Porphyria's Lover", written by Robert Browning, gives you a dramatic insight into the mind of a abnormally possessive lover, and "Shall I Compare thee..?", written famously by William Shakespeare, is about true love, and immortalises someone through the "eternal" lines of a sonnet.  "Ballad" describes how a girl falls in love with a shepherd and is too naïve to believe he doesn't love her back. Yet when she loses her virginity to him and gets pregnant, he leaves her and she is left feeling ashamed and remorseful. Between lines 1 to 5, it says: "He stole away my liberty: When my poor heart was strange to men, He came and smiled and stole it then", This has imagery of theft and shows that the shepherd stole her virginity by being kind to her. The way it says: "My poor heart was strange to men", shows she had never really been with any other person until the shepherd came along. This would make her vulnerable to being hurt by him. In the 4th verse, its states: "I wish, I wish - But it's in vain -, I wish I was a maid again: A maid again I cannot be: O when will green grass cover me?", the use of repetition of the word "wish" shows she deeply regrets losing her virginity to the shepherd, and by the way it says "When will green grass cover me?", tells us she wishes she was dead. The poem intimates quite a few times that the
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girl wishes she was dead, such as in line 20, "My soul with God, my body clay." and in line 24, "Left me to want a bed of clay", this tells us that love has had an adverse effect on her.  Verse 5 is also repeated at the end of the poem, this signifies how shameful she feels. It tells us she wishes that her baby would never be born, and that neither of them live. It states that she has "made thy pillow on a thorn", which gives us contrasting imagery to symbolise the the care a baby should ...

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