Comparing Ideas and Images in Four Metaphysical Love Poems Essay

The poem the ‘The Anniversary’ By John Donne, is a metaphysical poem about the sun itself growing older each year, this process reminds Donne that him and his lover are closer to their end. The second poem is called ‘One Flesh’, and is written by Elizabeth Jennings. In the course of this poem Jennings explores the relationship and separateness of her now elderly parents. There are multiple contrasting factors between these two poems, considering they are both written from different time periods and view love in sharply differing perspective.

Poetry, like all writing, has a tendency to fall into a creative rut. The created works tend to contain the same themes and fall into similar patterns, especially when they fall into a specific era. That’s why poems can be considered to be from the Romantic or Victorian period. When a poem manages to break out of that, it makes it memorable and worth noticing. “Reservation Love Song” by Sherman Alexie does so philosophically, by portraying a realistic side of love, while Mark Strand’s “Courtship” raises some interesting questions about the relationships between men and women. The poem “may i feel said he” by e.e. cummings portrays an adult’s love through a childlike appearance. Despite these differences, these three poems all address an interesting aspect within them while presenting a unique view on love and relationships.

Poetry written in the sixteenth century is not very different from modern-day poetry. Poets seem to continue to craft work based upon love and heartbreak more than any other topic. In Georgia Giscoigne’s 1573 poem “For That He Looked Not upon Her”, the speaker comes off as distraught over a girl, but actually has a more conflicting attitude towards her. The speaker feels desire towards this girl, but his desirer comes off as ambivalent at times. He shows indecisiveness about his feelings towards her, and at times comes off as regretful towards his past with her. Gascoigne presents a desiring, ambivalent, yet regretful attitude through his choice of title, diction, and use of metaphors.

In the beginning of the poem we see the line “Time that is moved by little fidget wheels” conveying the meaning he was taken before his time. This refers to the chronological and systematic time of humanity in which is measured by minutes and hours, shown on clocks that are symbolised by bells. This concept of time is far more powerful with the use of personification as emphasised by the capitalisation.

In this poem, the way the author wants the reader to “seize the day” is to get married. The first paragraph uses symbolism to compare aging to a flower that is wilting. Flowers are also commonly used as symbolism for virginity, which furthers the author’s theme of getting married and subsequently losing one’s virginity. While the theme can be about love, and virginity, and marriage, the general idea of the passage is seizing the day, which can be interpreted differently by every person. The idea is to find happiness and joy and live in the moment and whether or not that is found through love or not is up to the

Although Shakespeare was mocking other writer’s forms of love poems, I feel that he had a much deeper and more meaningful purpose to his sardonic writing. Shakespeare wanted to show that women can be beautiful without having cheeks as red as rose, or eyes

In the poems “The Love Song by J. Alfred Prufrock,” written in 1910, published in 1915, and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” written in 1917, both of which were written by poet and literary-critic T. S. Eliot, the symbolism and imagery of the women represented in mythological means, the locations and landscapes that both protagonists wander through or plan on going to, and the nature that is used in both poems are very similar, yet uniquely different. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is about a man with low self-confidence worrying about going to a party in the evening where he is sure that the women there with reject and ridicule him; “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” is about a man wandering his way back in the early hours of the morning

Robert Herrick's’ poem To the Virgins dramatizes the entanglement of two contending notions; time and beauty. The speaker yearns to take the one thing a woman holds all the power to, her virginity. Yet the subject of his lustfulness does not reciprocate his ferocity. As the time closes his window of opportunity mirrors the same constraint. Instead of seeing this predicament as a great hindrance, Using his circumstance as a catalyst to succeed in his contemptible quest,the speaker is able to begin his onslaught,” Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying…”. Although the woman the writer is trying to seduce seems surefooted in her thinking, the writer knows that by planting small seeds of ambiguity they may land faultlessly and begin to bear fruit. This poem strives impress upon his reader that granted they have their youth and beauty now, time waits for none and converges upon all. While they are worried about childish things, the writer uncovers the truth that age and death do lessen their appeal and value; though the beauty they hold now seems unparalleled, the grains of time fall still, even though “...the same flower that smiles today dies tomorrow.” By waiting any longer, the speaker illustrates

In the poetry we studied, love is also presented as a complicated and often negative way. Shakespeare presents Claudio and Hero as a pair of conventional lovers. Through their relationship he shows the audience how women were treated by men. Shakespeare presents women as objects: “Can the world buy such a jewel”.

The two poems are; Gee you're so beautiful it's starting to rain, & Rainy morning.

For example, the first stanza has an extremely loving and doting nature to it. The narrator is telling the woman how he would love her, if only he wasn’t constrained by time. He begins by complimenting her forehead and eventually making his way down to her heart: “An hundred years should go to praise/Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze/…An age at least to every part,/And the last age should show your heart” (13-18). The heart here acts as a metaphor for both sex and love, a double entendre of sorts. Moreover, while one reads the line, it may seem as though this is a romantic gesture but when considering the line in the context of the rest of the poem, it becomes clear that to the narrator, the heart and sex are interrelated. One can also infer that this is an exaggeration of her beauty and his love for her especially when looking at the poem as a whole, but in the moment, it seems as though he is truly in love with her. This point is further emphasized in the last few lines of the poem, discussing each part of her body: “An hundred years should go to praise…/But thirty thousand to the rest” (13-16). Of course, this is a ridiculous statement as even 100 years is an unrealistic time frame. But this once again emphasizes his theme of time and needing to seize the moment (carpe diem). Since they don’t have 100 years or 30,000 years

The poem “How Do I Love Thee”, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed”, by Edna Vincent Millay are both well-known poems that both have themes of love. (LIT, Kirszner & Mandell, Pg. 490). In both poems the poet helps the reader experience a lot of emotion with the use of certain words. There are speakers in both poems. In Mrs. Browning’s poem, the speaker is undefined, leaving open that the speaker could be a he or she. Millay’s poem which is written in first person, the speaker is more defined leading the reader to believe it is a she who is talking about love in the past tense. Both poems are sonnets written with fourteen lines, and written in Italian style. When comparing these poems we will be looking at the use of rhyme scheme and metaphors and how they were used to express emotions in these two sonnet poems.

In his poem, “But love whilst that thou mayst be loved again”, he focuses on warning women to find love soon because beauty will not last with age. He compares a woman’s beauty to a flower: “the fairest flower that ever saw the light / men do not weigh the stalk for what it was / when they find her flower, her glory, pass” (Daniel 6, 13-14). Through this metaphor, he shows how men view beauty in love. No one looks at a dead flower and thinks about what it used to be, rather, he or she looks towards other flowers that bloom with life and colour. This sonnet begins as an admiration for his subject’s beauty, but it ends by telling the subject that when her physical beauty deteriorates, no one will love her. This poem reflects society’s fixation on superficial beauty because it reminds women that they will never find love without external beauty, as a result of the superficiality of men in society. Both poems of the Renaissance Period assert the idea of perfection and the importance of physical beauty in love and relationships.

During the Renaissance period, most poets were writing love poems about their lovers/mistresses. The poets of this time often compared love to high, unrealistic, and unattainable beauty. Shakespeare, in his sonnet 18, continues the tradition of his time by comparing the speakers' love/mistress to the summer time of the year. It is during this time of the year that the flowers and the nature that surround them are at there peak for beauty. The theme of the poem is to show the speakers true interpretation of beauty. Beauties worst enemy is time and although beauty might fade it can still live on through a person's memory or words of a poem. The speaker realizes that beauty, like the subject of the poem, will remain perfect not in the

On surface level of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, the reader might imagine the poem to be the speaker merely trying to get a girl to fall in love with him and be in a relationship. However, upon a closer analysis of the poem, it is evident that the speaker has a much different and deeper motive of trying to persuade this mistress to have sexual relations with him, even though the two are not held in marriage together. The speaker is able to create his argument to have sex with him by using the pressing matter of time, mainly by stating that time is dwindling and there is no time like the present.