This fact makes this piece of work an argumentative poem, marking a strong difference between the other four of this collection which have an important romantic tone.
“How do I love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning is another poem which only speaks of love and doesn’t mention loss. It is an iambic pentameter poem, it has fourteen lines like Shakespeare’s sonnet. It is an almost lyric poem as it contains much emotion, sparks the reader’s imagination and has a melody like that of an epigram. It is an Italian sonnet, shown by its rhymic pattern ABBA ABBA CDC DCD and has a masculine rhyme to create a theme of love and a romantic atmosphere.
Contrasting with “Sonnet 116”, this poem is very personal, the poet is talking in the first person “I”, “my” and is adressing her lover by “thee”. She enumerates the ways in which she loves him, creating many metaphors. “ I love thee to the level of everyday’s most quiet need” means she loves him in the most ordinary situations, “by sun & candlelight”, by day and night. In the verses 7 to 12, she compares her love to the passion men feel when fighting for their convictions, to her past feelings of childhood innocence, to the love with which she loved a “Saint”, a hero or a person she admired before he deceived her. She concludes that she loves him with all her life. All these comparisons help the reader to perceive love as a living thing rather than a hollow emotion. The repetition of “I love thee” and the alliteration of sounds such as “t” and “th” convey to the reader the sheer depth and intensity of emotions for the loved one.
Written by a woman, a romantic and a sensible atmosphere is thus created. It is a very personal, passionate and enthousiastic poem with religious elements, using personal experience to express the same thing Shakespeare did, that is, the presumed nature of love.
“So, We’ll Go No More a Roving” and “When We Two Parted” are both written by Lord Byron and present two very different ways of dealing with love and loss in spite of a large number of similitudes.
“So, We’ll Go No More a Roving” tells us in the title itself that the poet is going to talk about a separation, the end of a relationship. The use of “we” also makes this poem personal, the author writing about his own experience. It is a poem composed of three stanzas each of four lines. These quatrains are clearly distinguished, containing many run-on lines; there is a full stop at the end of each of them, creating a suprising regularity. A man is writing to a woman that they will be “no more a roving” in the middle of the night because his heart needs “rest”. He does so in a detached, almost casual way, as if he was considering himself very generous and kind to relinquish her in this “gentle” way. The repetition of “night” and “moon” sets us in almost magical walks by the light of the moon. The poet justifies himself in the second stanzas where, not finding any valid reasons, he repeats himself by saying “outwears” and “wears out”, “must pause” and “have rest”. The simile between a “soul” locked in the “breast” and a “sword” in a “sheath” magnifies the importance of the message the poet wants the girl to understand. However, he uses soft similes and affirmations to make the message pass gently, without being rude. He also emphasizes the fact that his feelings had not changed, that he still loves her by repeating “love” and “loving” three times.
Comparatively, “When We Two Parted” is also a poem about the end of a relationship, of two people who “parted”. It is a poem of 4 stanzas each of 8 lines clearly distinguished with a full stop at the end of each one of them. The ABAB rhyme scheme and the large number of run-on lines create the same continuity and regularity then in the other Byron’s poem. A man is grieving over this separation with a woman whom he loved but who is sneered at by the society. But this grievance is caused more by the question how he could have loved her in spite of her light character then by the separation itself. The grief and sadness of the poet are shown by “tears”, “broken-hearted”, “cold”, “sorrow, “sunk”, “knel”, “rue”, “grieve” and “tears”. The poet is conscious he cannot speak of her to anyone because of her reputation as a “light” woman. He demonstrates this fact by the repetition of the word “silence”. This woman has clearly hurt him with her “vows...broken” and her “deceiv[ing] spirit”. Her light character is obviously shown by “light is thy fame” and “shame”. The poet cannot tell anyone about the link that existed between them, also because of his broken heart. He is almost angry at himself that he could fall in love with such a girl (“Why wert thou so dear?”). He employs the verb “sever” to mark their separation; it generates an effect of a severed link between them which cannot be replaced. The metaphor “knell” indicates their parting was for him like a funeral, a funeral of their past.
These two poems have a large number of similitudes, however, the strongest link between them is their modern outreach. They talk about parting between lovers as it is perceived today, that is, less emotional and more detached then in the 19th century for example.
“Remember” is a sonnet, made up of fourteen lines, two quatrains and two stanzas of three verses each. Its rhyme pattern is ABBA ABBA CDD ECE. It is, again, a personal poem, using personal pronouns such as “I”, “me”, “our” adressing someone by “you”. The second poem written by a woman in this collection, it is also very emotional and loving. It is about a woman writing to a beloved one praying him to remember her if she should go “far away into the silent land”. However, in the third stanza she changes her mind and tells him to “forget and smile” rather than “remember and be sad”. She uses many metaphors and similes to talk about death in a crescendo way, such as “gone away”, “gone far away”, “silent land”, “no more hold me by the hand”, “nor I half-turn”, “no more”, “it will be late”. She also repeats the word “remember” five times to emphasize the importance that he should remember her. It creates thus a bigger surprise when she suddenly takes the decision that he should forget her. It proves she thinks more of him than of herself. This poem is both about love and memory after death, which is mentioned only through the use of metaphors. The most important one, “silent land” is inspired by various religions who see death as a peaceful land filled with wandering souls. This poem, touching the theme of loss from the point of view of the person who fears her death, enables us to see this feeling from another perspective.
This collection of love poems has allowed us to look at the different ways authors deal with the emotions of love and loss. On the one hand, “Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare is an explanatory and argumentative poem about what love should and should not be. He doesn’t speak of his own emotions, it is not a personal poem. On the other hand, all of the other poems speak of personal experience and include a certain level of sentimentality. “How do I love Thee” and “Remember” are the most romantic and emotional poems, probably because they are written by women. We then have a man’s point of view in Lord Byron’s poems “So, We’ll Go No More a Roving” and “When We Two Parted”. He writes about the end of relationships and the loss of a loved one when these separations occur. He treats this theme in an extremely modern way, making his poems an interesting dramatised reading in a contemporary context.
