The complicated nature of love makes it hard to describe by merely mere simple language. The complexity of love is beautifully expressed by the poets through various poetic devices which have a lasting impression on the reader.
"A Birthday" by Christina Rossetti uses similes like "My heart is a singing bird" and "My heart is like an apple tree". Comparing her feelings to nature makes the verses more romantic and we can vividly imagine how the poet feels. The verse "the birthday of my life is come, my love is come to me", links the poem to the title and also describes the feelings of the poet. Birthdays are associated with happiness, but a birthday of life means that there is great change of the world around you. The overwhelming use of poetic devices such as similes and imagery prove to describe her love, which is only one emotion, shows us how complex and intense love can be.
In "How Do I love Thee?" there is heavy use of similes, similar to "A Birthday". This poem is a sonnet and therefore has a regular rhyme scheme which makes the poem more memorable to the readers and leaves a lasting and happy impression about love. The verse "In my old griefs and with my childhood's faith" compares the poet's love to blind faith. She says that she loves her husband the same way a child blindly follows someone, even when she is melancholy, which makes the reader realize the magnitude of Barrett's love to her husband. The verse "I love thee with a love I seemed to lose", implies an infinite amount of love coming from her side, as any love that she thought she had lost is added to her existing tremendous love. The repetition of "I love" throughout the poem also emphasizes the great deal of love she has for her lover.
In "When We Two Parted" there is a melancholy mood throughout. Unlike "A Birthday" and "How Do I love Thee", this poem shows how love can be complex to describe, but on the gloomy side of the scale. The line "Half broken-hearted to sever for years" Shows us the extent of the poet's sadness. He says that his sadness feels like a heart being torn apart for the rest of his life. The line "Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this" Shows us that since the hour of parting, it has been sorrowful for the poet. Again the poem uses comparisons to be able to describe his heart break due to parting. The lines "I felt like the warning of what I feel now" is a complex comparison of what the poem feels. The "dew" which "sunk chill" on the poet's
brow" reminds him of his feelings day by day. The word "chill" here is symbolic of his sad emotions, just like the word "cold" in La Belle Dame Sans Merci. It also shows us that love can bring a sad ending. Love is usually associated with happiness but this poem proves this speculation wrong.
Through the poems' language we see that love branches out many emotions. Love can bring about happy emotions, love can bring about sad emotions, and love can be a self-destructive emotion. The poems "A Birthday" and "How Do I love thee" show love to be a happy emotion. In both poems love is described as bringing complete bliss to the poets' lives. The simile "I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise" in "How Do I Love Thee?" shows us that her love is pure, similar to how patriotic men strive for a just cause and not for pride and glory. This tells us that Elizabeth Barrett loves her husband without any other intentions, for her love is "passion put to use". The repetition of the word "thee" tells us that Barrett has great respect for her husband. This also indicated that her love is morally spiritual and that she has decided to be devoted to him. The lines "I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears of my life" show us that whatever happens, Elizabeth Barrett will still love her husband. This shows us the strength of the "glue" of love. Can we think of any other emotion that can preoccupy us to this degree without us being worried about carrying it with us, and for the rest of our life? As we can see love is an extreme bond that can overcome any obstacle. Such is the complex nature of love.
In "A Birthday", Christian Rossetti heavily compares her "heart" to happy scenes seen in nature such as "apple tree" and "rainbow shell". These scenes are related to scenes of spring, again showing us a sign of a new beginning, which brings about the title "A Birthday". She wants the grandest celebration possible for her birthday with "dais of silk", " doves and pomegranates" and "silver fleur-de-lys". The latter words are French for lily flowers. French is used here as it is thought to be the "language of love", and these French words end her view of her "birthday" celebration. This poem shows us how bliss "true love" can feel when it arrives, "My love is come to me". The poet is imagining a fairy tale world where everything suddenly feels "right" and that nothing can take her joy away. However in the poem "When we two parted" we see the start of a dilemma in the poet's life as he cannot get over his formal lover, "in silence I grieve". The bursts of different joyful emotions in "A Birthday" shows us how love can be complex as it ignites other different emotions in one's heart.
Similar to "A Birthday" use of French, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" is a French title. From the title we know that the poem is about mental torture, as it is associated with a "lady without merci". Being a Ballad, this poem tells us a story effectively about a knight who had been deceived by a "wild" lady who was as beautiful as a "faery's child". The knight is obviously bewildered as he is "Alone and paley loitering… no bird's sing". Here we see a reference to nature like in "A Birthday", but the birds aren’t singing here, symbolizing the opposite of happiness, gloominess. The knight is obviously only attracted to the lady through sexual love, "Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild". He praises her only physically, showing he doesn’t love the person that she is but rather her body. Flowers are a symbol of love for many people and he makes her a "garland for her head". He shows deep care for her and she seems to reciprocate his love, which makes the knight attached to her all the more, until she deceives him. This shows us that looks can be deceiving and love only due to sexual attraction brings misery and confusion and makes one feel like he is "on the cold hill side". He wakes up on the same spot that he slept in after he had shared "love" with La Belle Dame; however the adjective "cold" shows us a sudden change of his happy feelings to misery. In contrast to "A Birthday" and "How Do I love Thee", the poem does not show any sign of permanent happiness in the knight, but one that is absolutely temporary. This shows us that the period of happiness that loves brings to a person depends on how "pure" the love is and that pure love stands the test of time. We start realizing that the more "sincere" the love is, the more it "lasts" in its happy state and the more joyous one gets.
Love is said to hold people close together through the trial of time. However does this mean it brings about a positive effect? The poem "When We Two Parted" shows us that when the love bond is broken by parting, it brings a dejected feeling. The various verses in the poem show that the poet feels he has nothing left in his life worth living for. The lines "Long, Long shall I rue thee, too deeply to tell" Tell us about the poet's deep and complex feelings. He is disheartened by the separation yet he regrets being with him/her earlier. The repetition of "Long" shows us the extent of the poet's sadness by making it clear that his misery is there to stay with him for a "long" time. Love often makes a victim wonder why is he under its spell which the words "Why wert thou so dear?" show. The poet questions why his former lover was so dear to him. This infact shows us how complex love is. The poet resorts to suffer quietly, "In silence I grieve". The words "I hear thy name spoken and share in its shame", indicates that the couple weren’t happy before they parted. It also hints about bitterness between the couple as the poet is ashamed of the relationship, which may have been a homosexual one. This is enforced through the lines "In secret we met", showing that their relationship wasn’t acceptable in society. Again this shows us that love is stronger than hate, and the poet finds it hard to forget about his former lover for a "long, long" time. The strong bond of love which was seen as bringing a positive effect in "How Do I Love Thee", actually work against the poet in this poem, as he feels more miserable every time he remembers his former lover. With these examples of the lovers' experiences we realize that love can really be problematic to comprehend.
Many strong feelings make one want to burst out his feelings to someone. Love is no different. The poem "My Last Duchess" is a monologue written by Robert Browning to express his feelings towards his "lover". Through a monologue we can get a view of the character of the poet himself as it gives us only a one-sided view. The Duke in the poem says "That’s my last Duchess…looking as if she were alive." This line has a bitter tone and we get an impression that the Duke is irate. His possessive love towards his late wife is evident in the lines "she had a heart…too soon made glad, too easily impressed; she liked whate'er she looked on". This shows us that the Duke does not approve of his wife getting impressed by everyone around her, and shows a sign of his jealousy. This jealousy would only be there if he had "loved" the duchess and thus, this shows us the self-destructing side of love. I think that jealousy is one of the ugliest emotions that humans could possess, yet the emotion of love can ignite this repulsive emotion. The jealousy from the Duke's side is enforced when he says "some officious fool broke in the orchard for her". The Duke ranks other men as "fools" as he is irritated by the Duchess's attention towards "other men". The Duke's emotions are a contrast to the emotions expressed in the poem "A Birthday", where there is a spontaneous flow of happiness throughout the poems, shown with the words "Singing", "rainbow shell" and "birthday". "My Last Duchess" is also a contrast to the poem "How Do I Love Thee" where Barrett vows to love her husband for all her life, and not end her lover's life like the Duke does, "Smiles, tears, of all my life!" However we must stop and consider this point. One poem shows jealousy, the other shows happiness, but both of these poems are about the theme of love. Doesn’t this make love all the more complex? The duke actually takes action against his own wife, particularly assassination "This grew; I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together". The words "This grew" refers to the Duke's pride and jealousy. It is hard to imagine how possessive love could drive him to kill his wife, however this happens, showing us how love can bring literal "destruction" as well as mental "self-destruction" and degrading.
It is safe to say that love is the only emotion that can be carried on to the after-life. Love is a spiritual bond which death cannot take away. This is expressed in "How Do I love Thee" where the poet says "I shall but love thee better after death". This does not only show us the extent of the poet's love towards her husband, but also tells us that the poet is confident that their love will survive through death. This is a complete contrast to what is shown in "My Last Duchess" where the love of the duke towards the duchess, albeit "possessive love" results in death and surely the Duchess wont take this "love" with her to the afterlife, if that existed to start with. The ability of love being carried on the after-life makes it stand out from the other emotions humans feel.
All of the love poems have contributed in showing us how love can be a complex emotion. Love can be of sexual, possessive or spiritual. It can bring about happiness, joy, jealousy or sadness, depending on various circumstances. The poems, showing us different types of love, bring all of these feelings to light for the reader. Their use of imagery, poetic devices and emphasis shows us how love can be a complex emotion which would need more than a line to define. Love can be beautiful and love can be nasty, and poets have been inspired to write thousands of poems to express their own experience with this emotion, which is beyond human complete comprehension.
After reading the poems, I am baffled by the endless possibilities of love. The poems had enlightened me about the various types of love and how complex each type can be. Before reading the poems I had always thought love is about caring and bringing people together, but I had not realized that it can have a sad and depressing side to it, such as depression and dejection, under certain circumstances. We would actually need to experience love to understand its true nature. Reading poems and quotes about love, in my opinion, is just the beginning. Love will always be a topic open to minds to interpret and open to hearts to sense it.
