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| Love Through the Ages (Renaissance - Postmodern) |
To His Coy Mistress - Andrew Marvell
(1621-1678)
Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet writing in the Renaissance period. The metaphysical poets were characterised by their speculation on topics of love and religion, their carpe diem attitude, and their use of metaphysical conceits (an extended metaphor with complex logic). Their poems often take the form of an argument or a line of reasoning and in the case of To His Coy Mistress that argument is the speaker's attempt to persuade a "coy" woman to sleep with him. Marvell's speaker uses the threat of "Time's winged chariot hurrying near" to persuade and rather than concluding that the inevitability of death suggests the futility of love (as in As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H. Auden), he uses it to emphasise the urgency of love. The speaker even goes as far as to suggest that by sleeping together the pair will gain an element of control over the passing of time:
"Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run."
The poem is written in the classical tradition of a Latin love elegy, in which the speaker praises his mistress through the motif of carpe diem. Initially the speaker constructs an elaborate conceit of the things he would do to honour her, had he "but world enough, and time". However, the poems tone shifts at line 21 when time is introduced as a threat and the speaker warns of the "Deserts of vast eternity" that await them after death (a controversially secular statement, particularly considering Marvell's father was a Church of England clergyman). The speaker appears to use fear evoking language in order to strengthen his argument, using the foul description of worms on her corpse to reason the futility of her preserving her virginity, and references to "ashes" and "fires" could suggest a hellishness to their circumstance (as well as the 'burning' desire he has for her). The pace of the first half of the poem reflects the absence of time in the scenario he describes as words are liberally supplied in luxurious imagery of rubies and empires, multiple metaphors that allude essentially to the same point, and a list of her parts that he would admire. But pace as well as tone alter after line 21 as suddenly subjects switch from time, to death, to decay, to youth, to sex in quick succession, illustrating with his pace the urgency that he is attempting to convey with his words.
Ah, how sweet it is to love - John Dryden
Ah, how sweet it is to love - John Dryden
(1631-1700)
John Dryden was an influential English poet who dominated the literary life of the Restoration England to such an extent that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. His poem Ah, how sweet it is to love describes love as painful and yet venerates it throughout - not in spite of the pain it causes, but because of it. Dryden describes the "pleasing pains" that love induces in one's youth in delicate and romantic terms: sighs heave the heart "gently", tears "cure", and lovers even die an "easy death". The trochaic tetrameter and consistent ABABCC rhyme scheme used throughout give the poem a cheerful song-like quality. This tone is established clearly within the first two lines as both begin with "Ah," and end in an exclamation mark which suggests the wistful and cheery perspective of the speaker as well as emphasising the melodic qualities of the poem. The suffering that love causes is presented as one of the benefits, or "golden gifts" that love has to offer:
Porphyria's Lover - Robert Browning
"Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are."
The entire poem comes across as somewhat nostalgic, not only because of the melodic rhythm and wistful language used, but also the frequent reference to the importance of youth in the enjoyment of love. The reader is advised that the "golden gifts" that love and time are said to offer are only offered "in youth" and should be treated as "a parting friend". The way in which the pleasures of love are diminished with age is left ambiguous. The third stanza states that love's "price is more" and that it is "less simple" which suggests that love becomes more complicated which dampens its positive effects - this is supported by the line in the final stanza that says "it runs not clear". However, the line "But each tide does less supply" suggests that the amount of love a person feels depletes with age.
Porphyria's Lover - Robert Browning
(1812-1889)
Robert Browning was an English poet whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poem Porphyria's Lover is one of his earliest and most shocking monologues. The poem begins in a scene more suited to Romantic poetry where the speaker and his lover Porphyria are sheltered from the storm in a warm cottage. But from the beginning, hints appear of the speaker's dangerous instability: he begins the poem with a "heart fit to break" for little reason other than the stormy weather and Porphyria's temporary absence, he also states that "no voice replied" when she called to him which suggests an unnerving detachment from his circumstance, furthermore the cadence of the poem mimics natural speech but it is intensely and asymmetrically (ABABB) structured which warns of the madness beneath the narrator's reasoned self-pretension. This instability ultimately leads to the speaker murdering Porphyria by strangling her with her own "yellow hair" which he admires throughout.
Porphyria begins the poem as assertive and mature. It is her who turns on the fire despite arriving at the cottage after the speaker, she places the speaker's arm "about her waist", and she is the only one to speak throughout. However, in the second stanza the speaker begins to force Porphyria into a submissive and childish role. He says that she "worships" him when we know she only murmured that she loved him (which reflects on the speakers own distorted view of love). He also begins to describe the features of her body with emphasis on their youthfulness e.g. her "little" throat, her "blue eyes" that "laughed", her "blushed" cheeks, her "smiling rosy little head" which "droops" on his shoulder. By highlighting Porphyria's youth Browning makes her murder even more horrific by creating a sense of her vulnerability, and by exploiting this vulnerability the speaker's character is established as psychopathic and controlling.
As I Walked Out One Evening - W.H. Auden
Porphyria begins the poem as assertive and mature. It is her who turns on the fire despite arriving at the cottage after the speaker, she places the speaker's arm "about her waist", and she is the only one to speak throughout. However, in the second stanza the speaker begins to force Porphyria into a submissive and childish role. He says that she "worships" him when we know she only murmured that she loved him (which reflects on the speakers own distorted view of love). He also begins to describe the features of her body with emphasis on their youthfulness e.g. her "little" throat, her "blue eyes" that "laughed", her "blushed" cheeks, her "smiling rosy little head" which "droops" on his shoulder. By highlighting Porphyria's youth Browning makes her murder even more horrific by creating a sense of her vulnerability, and by exploiting this vulnerability the speaker's character is established as psychopathic and controlling.
As I Walked Out One Evening - W.H. Auden
(1907-1973)
W.H. Auden was an Anglo-American poet noted for his variety in tone, form and content, and his poetry's engagement with politics, morals, love and religion. His poem As I Walked Out One Evening is a ballad with a song-like meter that juxtaposes the optimistic romance of a young lover with the predatory omnipresence of Time personified. The poem opens with contrast as the first speaker presents the landscape as both urban and rural ("crowds upon the pavement" / "an arch of the railway" vs "fields of harvest wheat" / "the brimming river"). The first speaker overhears a song sang by a lover whose song makes him the second speaker. He claims his love will last until "the seven stars go squawking / Like geese about the sky" and a series of other surreal impossibilities which serve to romanticise his optimism but also establish his expectations for love as unrealistic. At the end of his song, the first speaker introduces the third:
The clocks' mention of "coughs", "headaches" and the "appalling snow" that drifts into "many a green valley" warns with clarity the threat of death, but soon they descend into surreal imagery, a sinister reflection of the surrealism in the lover's song. Throughout their speech the clocks begin stanza's by exclaiming "O" which creates the sense of a lament, while the repetition of "stare, stare", "look, look" and "stand, stand" mimic the monosyllabic tick tick tick of a clock. When the first speaker speaks again he uses the same repetition for "late, late in the evening" as if he is echoing Time's threat. He ends the poem by saying "the lovers they were gone" but "the deep river ran on" which ultimately proves what the clocks had warned; time would outlast their love.
"But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time."
Eurydice - Carol Ann Duffy
(1955- )
Dame Carol Ann Duffy is a Post-Modern poet, and the fist Scottish person, LGBT person, and woman to be named Poet Laureate. Her poem Eurydice was published in her collection The World's Wife which takes characters, histories, and myths which were traditionally focused on men and explores them from a female perspective. Eurydice tells, from Eurydice's perspective, the story of Orpheus who tries to 'save' her from the underworld. The poem itself is an intimate conversation aimed only at women made evident by the conversational address "Girls," at the start of some stanzas. Eurydice proves her own intelligence and her sense of humour throughout the poem, often by using poetic and lyrical language followed immediately by an anticlimactic phrase such as "then picture my face in that place/ of Eternal Repose/ in the one place you'd think a girl would be safe". Orpheus, on the other hand, is described as childish and arrogant, with an ego of a disproportionate size to his talents (which she considers to be modest).
"rest assured that I'd speak for myself
than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess,
etc., etc.
In fact, girls, I'd rather be dead."
Eurydice draws attention to the fact that women who are romanticised by men are often simultaneously dehumanised, and Eurydice undermines the expectation placed upon women to be grateful for it. She goes on to use Orpheus' vanity to trick him into turning to her so that he loses his bargain with Hades and she can remain in the underworld. When he turns she remarks "I noticed he hadn't shaved", a trivial observation that confirms how unmoved she was by him. She concludes the poem by reflecting on the calm and mature superiority of death over trivial life, using the analogy f a "vast lake" (which could also be a reference to the mythological water that the dead had to cross accompanied by Charon to reach the underworld) which holds the "wise, drowned silence of the dead."
