Andrew Marvell's The Definition of Love is the epitome of irony. Marvell takes the feelings often associated with love and drowns them in a cool, lucid, dispassionate tone that borders on self-mocking. Marvell writes about unrequited passions, insisting that Fate itself acts against true love. Mentioned first in the third stanza, Marvell introduces the idea of Fate as the reason for his rough history with love:
"And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt" (lines 9-12)
Taking this into consideration it is not surprising why the hatred that Marvell has for Fate flows into the next two stanzas. In the third stanza, Marvell explains how Fate becomes jealous when she sees two lovers engulfed in one another, and dissolves their relationship in a "tyrannic power depose" (line 16). He goes on to explain the idealistic nature of love:
"As lines (so loves) oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, cannot meet" (lines 25-28)
Marvell believes love is something that people think they can possess but it's really an unattainable goal. Instead of Fate matching people up, Marvell believes that fate only tears people apart.
Marvell ends the poem with a small shred of hope:
"Therefore the love which us doth bind.
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars" (lines 29 - 32)
Though this sounds as if it would be in a typical love poem, the reader must look closely at the final two lines.
The first six lines of the poem highlight the incompetence of love when compared to the basic supplies for life. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; It is quite obvious that the narrator highlights everything that requires living in line 1 through 6. Line 1 depicts the deficiency of love as a thing that is not able to provide food as compared to “meat” (1): love cannot hydrate a man as signified by “drink” (1): love cannot refresh a man as signified by “slumber” (2): it does not offer shelter as signified by “a roof against the rain” (2): love cannot give a preserving “floating spar” to a man who is in peril (3): nor will love give air to a “thickened lung” (5): love cannot “set the fractured bone” (6). The narrator describes love as a worthless element in the first 6 lines, but line 7 and line 8 express a tremendous level of violence that people are willing to commit because of the lack of love: “ Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone” (7-8). Line 7 and line 8 is an evidence to prove that no matter what the poet says about love, people are willing to die for it because it is important.
to be taken literally just really to prove that what he says really does mean something and to emphasize the subject and the romanticism of the poem I intend to discuss the concept of the love poem first. Marlowe paints a picture of the romantic dream of love.... ... middle of paper ... ...effect depending on the way it is presented. It is also an image of time.
After reading the entire play, the reader can safely say that fate works in mysterious ways. To love and be loved in return is considered by many to be one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive. At the same time, it is thought of as unbearable to love someone you cannot be with. Especially when the reasoning behind limitations is cau...
poem. It almost seems that the narrator is recalling the woman that was from his past and
I would not say this is a love poem, as the narrator never once says
Some may say love is just an emotion while others may say it is a living and breathing creature. Songs and poems have been written about love for hundreds and thousands of years. Love has been around since the beginning of time, whether someone believes in the Big Bang or Adam and Eve. Without love, there wouldn’t be a world like it is known today. But with love, comes pain with it. Both William Shakespeare and Max Martin know and knew this. Both ingenious poets wrote love songs of pain and suffering as well as blossoming, newfound love. The eccentric ideal is both writers were born centuries apart. How could both know that love and pain work hand in hand when they were born 407 years apart? Love must never change then. Love survives and stays its original self through the hundreds and thousands of years it has been thriving. Though centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Max Martin share the same view on love whether i...
Extreme passion results in irrational actions with horrifying consequences. The indecisive and fervent whims regarding love and the human heart are often selfish and fickle. For the victims of love, destruction is often inevitable. In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, unrequited love forces both Romeo and Juliet to commit suicide, as neither one believes it is possible to continue life without the other. Both, through mere days of desperation, elation, deception, and grief, were ultimately cheated out of their lives by their love. Shakespeare develops a similar opinion through Helena in A Midsummers Night’s Dream. Helena is able to recognize love as a volatile creature, yet with uncontrollable power over the heart.The transient nature of love is channeled through deception and clouded judgement.
This line was very unexpected and this line makes the poem what it is. The poem transition from a love poem to a darker more painful story. The tone of the poem also shifts to a more eerie tone. Another thing about the third stanza is that at this moment in the poem, I can connect the poem to the Greek mythological story of Persephone and Hades. The allusion sets up the rest of the poem and gives the poem a lot more meaning.
Love is ironic. It can take you anywhere in the world unexpectedly, and turn you into a person that you never were. However, love is also two-faced, having both a negative and positive view. It is what drives you to the point where you do not know who you are anymore. In Shakespeare's story, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare perceives love with the personalities and actions of the characters, Romeo and Juliet. Both Romeo and Juliet are characterized as immature and irrational due to their "love." In addition, both characters fail to realize the reality of life and go towards the path of adolescence. Even though Romeo and Juliet are doomed at the end of the journey of "love," their demise was caused by their rash and silly decisions because their belief of everlasting love blinds them from reality and shapes their lives into an unstoppable time bomb.
On the other side, “Love Poem” is very different from the previous poem. This seven stanza poem is based on a man describing the imperfections of his lover. In this, the speaker uses stylistic devices, such as alliteration and personification to impact more on reader, for example as the speaker shows “your lipstick ginning on our coat,”(17) ...
Although love is interpreted as a wonderful thing it can also ruin someone's life, “Love is a trap. When is appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.” (Paulo Coelho) Love doesn’t fix people it breaks them asunder. It waits and waits for its next target to make a mistake and ruin everything they worked for. As seen in various works including; “The Raven” , Romeo and Juliet, and “The Gift of the Magi”. Romantic love is a force that inflicts pain upon those who believe in it or those who have been through it.
Shakespeare implies that love occurs as a result of fate which to a large extent, is responsible for Romeo and Juliet’s encounter. In the first few scenes of the play, there are several events which suggests that fate is responsible for the destined events which instigate their love. The servant is predestined to tell Romeo “come and crush a cup of wine” (act 1, scene 2, 79) due to the fact that Romeo would never have met Juliet if he was uninformed of this party. It is also fate which causes Romeo to attend the party and defy his instincts despite knowing that the event could “forfeit [his] untimely death” (act 1, scene 4, 113). Due to their fate, Romeo who plans to see Rosaline states “I ne'er saw true beauty till this night” (50, act1, scene 5) when he falls in love at first sight with Juliet. Shakespeare suggests that fate has the ability to control love, through the predetermined events which led to Romeo and Juliet’s encounter.
and it's foolish for two lovers to postpone a physical relationship. Marvell's piece is structured as a poem, but flows as a classical argument. He uses the three stanzas to address the issues of time, love, and sex. In doing so, he creates his own standpoint and satirizes his audience in the process. Using appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos; logical reasoning; and even a hint of the Rogerian technique - Marvell proves that acting now is essential.
love is to lose the entire entity of oneself. There are times when one must choose a path that will lead towards sacrifice in order to achieve a greater acceptance of the reality that is life. Our life reflects upon the ability to understand the ongoing struggles in human nature. The late William Shakespeare truly understood the conflicts that occurred in the mind and body on man. He demonstrates his interpretation of life, love, and loss in the play The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
Within this dark and dreary world where we so happen to find things that stand in our way and throw a wrench into all of the plans that we have made to appease ourselves. These simple, seemingly ordinary things can turn a whole world into nothing but rubble. The worst thing about these irritating interlopers is the very fact that almost every time, without fail, they turn out to have some sinister and humorous irony about themselves. That irony can sometimes make life far too hard for some people to bear. But some people don’t have to for long. Many authors have written tremendous novels based on dark irony and those malicious things in this world. So very many of them have succeeded in portraying this irony perfectly, and that tells you how very horrible that irony truly is. The famous short story author, Saki, told a very grim and ominous story called, The Interlopers. In this gloomy story of his, he uses irony to the very greatest of its potential and in the very last moments, he used dark imagery to show two men seemingly being served justice, but one can be lead to think otherwise.