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Analysis Of When I Am Young And Cannot Tell

Satisfactory Essays

Joanna Huynh
Dr. Caneen
English 1315-009
12 December 2017 Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell

“Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell” is a poem written by English playwright, Ben Jonson during 1640. The poem was featured in a play that he wrote called, The Sad Shepherd. It can be classified in the genre of a lyrical because in the play, the poem is being sung by a character named, Karolin. Lyrical poems are known to be musical and they generally evoke emotions. When read aloud, “Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell”, touches on topics of love and death, and has a melody that brings upon feelings of curiosity and discovery. Ben Jonson wrote the play in a meter called iambic tetrameter, which is when a line of poetry consists of …show more content…

In “Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell”, the speaker’s role is to explain the connection between love and death, and analyze the relationship that they have to one another and to life. The poem starts off with the speaker claiming that he does not know much about love and death. But as the poem progresses, the reader is able to see how the speaker’s curiosity results in him comparing and contrasting the two different subjects. The poem mainly focuses on the similarities of the effects of love and death. The poem explains that both love and death cause wounds, but the author then goes on to explain that love ultimately leads to the result of death. On the surface, we see that love and death can be easily tied together. One is described as heat, and the other is described as cold, and together, they have an effect that is “extreme to the touch” (8). Although they seem like they are complete opposites, through literary devices and specific choices of words, we can see that love and death are parallel.
The poem does not have a physical setting, but one could say that the thoughts are occurring in the speaker’s mind. The author uses personification multiple times throughout the poem in order to connect the reader with the concept of love and death. “Yet I have heard they both bear darts/ And both do aim at human hearts” (3-4). When the author

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