Compare the ways in which Lord Byron's 'So No More We'll Go A-Roving' and John Clare's 'I Am' convey their feelings about getting older/mental illness. Comment on language, rhythm, form and structure, as well as the content of the poem.

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Emma Kent  12:3

Compare the ways in which Lord Byron’s ‘So No More We’ll Go A-Roving’ and John Clare’s ‘I Am’ convey their feelings about getting older/mental illness. Comment on language, rhythm, form and structure, as well as the content of the poem.

Both ‘So We’ll Go No More A-Roving’ by Lord Byron, and ‘I Am’ by John Clare are poems displaying feelings on the subject of  feeling older and isolation. In ‘So We’ll Go No More A-Roving’, Byron describes his realisation that he is getting too old for his extravagant lifestyle. Clare, on the other hand, conveys his isolation and sadness as he grows old in a mental asylum. Both poets use various techniques to convey the subject matter in alternate lights.

         In ‘So We’ll Go No More A-Roving’, Byron displays a positive attitude towards his decision to isolate himself from society. This is reflected by the language in the poem which is fairly light, airy and simple. For example, the use of words such as ‘loving’, ‘bright’, and ‘breathe’ suggest that Byron is not resentful about slowing his life down.

        Clare, on the other hand, uses negative words to convey a bitterness towards his situation. Words such as ‘forsake’, ‘woes’, and ‘scorn’ suggest that unlike Byron, Clare is unhappy about his isolation.

        Clare has chosen to use dramatic words in his poem to maximise the impact of his message and convey his strong emotions. He describes his life’s esteems as a ‘vast shipwreck’. The use of the word ‘shipwreck’ conveys at maximum impact that his life was a complete disaster. Comparatively, Byron uses words with a calming quality such as ‘pause’ and ‘rest’. This conveys he is far more content with his life and growing old than Clare, and also as oppose to it being an emotional drama, for Byron it is more a peaceful decent.  

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       In both poems the writers are looking at themselves and their situation, and expressing their feelings towards this. In ‘I Am’ Clare conveys his strong feelings of isolation through the line ‘My friends forsake me like a memory lost’. The use of the word ‘forsake’ is dramatic and emphasises how alone he feels as he has been forsaken. The line ‘Are strange-nay, rather stranger than the rest’ conveys how the people closest to him no longer understand him. He has no one to share his pain with and consequently his misery grows deeper.

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