Thomas Hardy's 'A Trampwoman's Tragedy' and Lord Byron's 'When We Two Parted'

Each of the poems relies heavily on imagery to convey their respective messages. Often throughout each of the poems, the imagery is that of people. However, each uses similar imagery to very different, yet effective ways to explore the same

In this essay I am going to compare and contrast ‘When we two parted’ a poem of George Gordon, Lord Byron’s written in 1815 and Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s ‘Love’s last lesson’ written in c1838, both poets are British and of the romantic period.

The next difference that stands out between the two poems is the different tones in the speakers. In the poem by Robert Hayden, the tone comes off as having sadness and regret towards the speaker’s father. The poem says, “What did I know, what did I know of loves austere and lonely offices?” (13). In this writing, the speaker is now older and is looking back on what her father did for her as a child to show his love. She is sad now because, in her mind, she thought that her father did not care about her, but looking back she can clearly see that he loves her, which now makes her regret her relationship with him. In the poem by Lucille Clifton, the tone of the speaker can be perceived as the speaker being bitter and angry towards her father because he never bothered to take care of her and her mother both emotionally and financially. Clifton writes, “But you were the only son of a needy father, and the father of a needy son; you gave her all you had which was nothing” (12). The speaker’s father never gave his family anything, therefore, the speaker wants everything she never got in return. Both of these poems tie into theme in a certain way. “Those Winter Sundays” tone ties back to theme because they deal with regret and sadness because of the love the speaker never knew as a child.

The most obvious difference is the fact that one shows the perspective of a woman while the other tells a story from a man's perspective. The letter is written by a guy in the army to his wife and kids. He talks more about how he loves the Country so much that he is willing to die for it. The major does not really mind the fact that he is about to die and leave his family behind. Instead he tells his wife and kids to stay strong and that he will always be there for them. In contrast, the poem talks about how the women values her husband’s love and how he is such an idol. She would put her husband before anything and anyone. Just by reading the poem people are able to tell how much this women respects and loves her husband.Although they both love their families, one is willing to give up his life and abandon them.

The loss of a loved one is perhaps the most difficult experience that humans ever come up against. The poem Porphyria’s Lover, written by Robert Browning, adds a sense of irony to this. At the most superficial layer, the speaker’s in both Porphyria’s Lover and Neutral Tones, written by Thomas hardy, both deal with loss. The tones in Neutral Tones seem to be indifferent, or Neutral. Porphyria’s Lover speaker ends up murdering his beloved at the end the poem. While this isn’t the case with the speaker in Neutral Tones, the two speakers are much more similar than we might think. The speaker in Neutral Tones doesn’t outright murder his lover, but there is a considerable amount of disdain and contempt towards his supposed lover. The speaker in Porphyria’s Lover is quite obviously a disturbed man, the sinister nature of the speaker in Neutral Tones, however, is not as clear. Delving further into this idea, I will also discuss other obscure parallels throughout the two poems.

Thirdly, Both writers use a lot of imagery in their poems, they use a big amount of imagination to tell their experiences. Each poem is developed out of

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and the impossible love of Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver. These two stories have more in common than you think. They both end sourly, as each resists a “happy ever after” ending. Both romances also seem to convey that love isn’t always what it seems. And both their characters set unrealistic expectations for the others. As these stories unfold side by side, they seemed unlikely qualifiers of similarities, at first. But as one reads more and more, each tale exists to try to give a message to all who read. In reality, life and love don’t often end happily ever after.

Both the poems have the theme of love, written from a man’s point of view, and explores the way men treat woman in relationships. The former does this by a male narrator writing a poem to a female, using imagery to entice her. The latter by using a duke, explaining the story of what happened to his previous wife whilst looking at her picture. Both the poems use imagery and other poetic devices but in different ways. The first uses them more often to impress her. The second uses them in a

Love can be quite a difficult topic to write about, expressing one’s intimate and innermost emotions requires a great level of dedication and honesty. If done correctly, the outcome is truly stunning. John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and Katherine Philips’s “To Mrs. M.A. at Parting” are two masterpieces of this genre. These poems depict the concept of true love so meticulously that the reader cannot help but envy the relationships presented. Perhaps the reason that these works are so effective is due to the fact that they are incredibly similar to each other. Although some differences are present when it comes to structure and gender concerns, the poems share the same theme of love on a spiritual level and show many parallels in meaning.

Even though the poems were told in different point of view, the theme love was both still present in each poem. In "Leaving the Motel" Snodgrass uses first person as a way to show the closeness

Great writers convey their message without bluntly stating it to their audience. Hardy’s insightful poetry conjures the minds of his audience and encourages them to reflect on how inhumane the social classes were and how poorly women were treated without every saying it. Because of its’ simplicity and relatability Hardy’s clever use of an everyday conversation between two women is more powerful than any lengthy lecture or straightforward statement he could have given.

Poetry is a completely malleable form of expression that writers use as an outlet for emotion and advocacy. Because each poet is distinct in form and content, a poet may harbor some characteristics that bare a resemblance to work of another. If there is no room for comparison, a poem may have a literary complement that sets up an interesting contrast between poems, or a poem may reinforce the ideas of another poem. The works of Christina Rossetti and Robert Graves are no exception. Though the two lived in different centuries, they both wrote about relationships between the sexes. Rossetti and Graves’ forms differed even as their contents played upon one

(Compare and Contrast Between the Poems To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell and To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick)

known as dramatic monologue. Both of the Robert Browning poems are written in the first person, similarly to the

There are certain themes and ideas which appear over and over again in literature, no matter what the genre or form. Poems which were written centuries apart can echo similar ideas about life and humanity. Love is one such theme which presents itself repeatedly as seen in the poetry of William Shakespeare and that of Robert Burns. Each poem, though written more than two hundred years apart, explains what it feels like for the poet to feel love for the singular object of their affection. The poem "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" by Shakespeare and Burns' "A Red, Red Rose" share common images and themes with the intention of instilling in the reader the impression of their love and in explaining the depth of their emotion for the beloved as well as the respective poets ideas about the very nature of love and how it can be both passionately fulfilling and devastating.