Love in Poems
Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” is based on a real story
about the fifth Duke of Ferrera in the Renaissance period. He married
a 14-year-old named Lucrezia and then left her for a two-year period.
She died at the age of 17. In this poem, the Duke is now looking for a
second wife-to-be. Robert Browning is one of the greatest poets in the
Victorian age. He writes romantic poems and he expresses love in this
poem as obsessive. The poem’s rhyme scheme is a, a, b, b. This is a
dramatic monologue. This is the kind of poem where there is only one
speaker. In this poem it is the duke. At the very start of the poem,
we are already given the idea that the Duke is a proud man especially
with his art collections. “That’s my last duchess painted on the
wall”, this quote tells us that he includes his last wife in his
collection. The “my” emphasizes the duke owning his last duchess. By
doing this, Robert Browning emphasizes the Duke wanting power
especially over his last wife. Her painting is behind the wall now and
the Duke shows it to a very few chosen strangers, “since none puts the
curtain I have drawn for you but I”. The painting was made by Fra
Pandolf. The Duke is jealous by the fact that the Duchess can blush by
receiving any compliments from just anyone. “Sir, ‘twas not her
husband’s presence only…into the Duchess’ cheek.” In this quote, the
Duke never treated his wife as an equal. But he considered himself
higher than her and he wouldn’t lower himself to tell the duchess what
she did that annoyed him. He thinks the duchess has no pride at all
because she treats everybody equally, “as if she ranked my gift of a
nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody’s gift”. He wants the duchess
for h...
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...n wants the mistress to understand
that it will never be a good idea if she will die a virgin. He is now
desperate to get her in bed. If she dies a virgin, the man’s “lust”
will just turn to ashes. The last part of the poem uses a more
passionate language and basically gives the mistress a more appealing
idea if the man makes love to the mistress. The whole of the third
part is describing how the man feels about making love to the
mistress. Andrew uses similes “like morning dew” to compare the
“youthful hue” of his mistress and “like amorous birds of prey” to
describe the way in which they should do the act of making love.
Basically, this part has more persuasion than the other parts. It is
similar to “The Beggar Woman” because it represents physical love.
However, we will never know if the woman agrees with the man. We are
left to decide for ourselves.
Who is the speaker of the poem? It is not the author necessarily. What can you tell about the speaker from the poem?
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning is story of a duke recanting his story about his late wife. In this poem the author uses diction similar to conversational words as if he was speaking to someone or something, varied syntax, where he questions to engage the reader, and a vain and superficial tone where he places the value of his late wife to some simple bronze.
Attitudes Towards Love in Pre-1900 and 1990's Poetry “The Despairing Lover” written by William Walsh was written pre 1900 whilst the second poem “I Wouldn’t Thank you for a Valentine” by Liz Lockhead was written in the 1990’s. These poems are almost a century apart. Attitude towards love changes over time and these poems represent this. I Wouldn’t Thank you for a Valentine is about how people think about Valentine’s Day in the 1990’s, while The Despairing Lover is showing what people think and how important they see love in the 1990’s.
The three sources I have selected are all based on females. They are all of change and transformation. Two of my selections, "The Friday Everything Changed" by Anne Hart, and "Women and World War II " By Dr. Sharon, are about women’s rites of passage. The third choice, "The sun is Burning Gases (Loss of a Good Friend)" by Cathleen McFarland is about a girl growing up.
The Range of Feelings Associated with Love in Catullus and Lesbia' Poems Of Catullus’s poems, the Lesbia poems are the most memorable, particularly as they contain such a wide range of feelings and emotions. Whilst we do not know what order the poems were written in, it is tempting to arrange them in a progression from constant love, to confusion and despair and finally hatred. Poem 87 appears to be at the beginning of the relationship between Catullus and Lesbia. The symmetry of the couplets beginning “nulla” and ending with “mea est” emphasizes the idea that no one loves Lesbia as much as Catullus. The placement of “nulla” at the beginning of the
Both, the poem “Reluctance” by Robert Frost and “Time Does Not Bring Relief” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, revolved around the theme of lost love. Each poet used a similar array of poetic devices to express this theme. Visual imagery was one of the illustrative poetic devices used in the compositions. Another poetic device incorporated by both poets in order to convey the mood of the poems was personification. And by the same token, metaphors were also used to help express the gist of both poems. Ergo, similar poetic devices were used in both poems to communicate the theme of grieving the loss of a loved one.
of the speaker through out the poem. One Art is a poem about inevitable loss and the incognizant
In "My Last Duchess", by Robert Browning, the character of Duke is portrayed as having controlling, jealous, and arrogant traits. These traits are not all mentioned verbally, but mainly through his actions. In the beginning of the poem the painting of the Dukes wife is introduced to us: "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,/ looking as of she were still alive" (1-2). These lines leave us with the suspicion that the Duchess is no longer alive, but at this point were are not totally sure. In this essay I will discuss the Dukes controlling, jealous and arrogant traits he possesses through out the poem.
Love is one of the main sources that move the world, and poetry is not an exception, this shows completely the feelings of someone. In “Litany” written by Billy Collins, “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims, “Song” by John Donne, “Love” by Matthew Dickman and “Last Night” by Sharon Olds navigate around the same theme. Nevertheless, they differ in formats and figurative language that would be compared. For this reason, the rhetoric figures used in the poems will conduct us to understand the insights thought of the authors and the arguments they want to support.
that Clare feels that love can be for only one person at a time, as he
In the first several lines (1-8) of the poem , the duke is addressing an unknown listener. He only uses the pronoun "you" so it is never clear until the ending who the intended listener is. He begins by pointing out the portrait on the wall...
Additionally, the Duke has also a sense of dominance over the Duchess. “I gave commands then all smiles stopped together. There she stands as if alive.” The use of the forceful word ‘commands’ shows that the Duke has power over the Duchess. Together with the view of the Duchess as a possession, suggests the patriarchal society of the past. Furthermore, ‘then all smiles stopped together’ underlines a subtle but sinister tone change within the poem. The use of a . Possessive pronoun, patriarchy.
With time poems may have lost their voice, but not their importance. Up to this day, poetry is still one of the greatest forms of artistic expression; Poems speak to emotions and capture feelings. There is no right format of a poem, but yet a world of possibilities. Instead being unchangeable poems are innately open to interpretation; they should be spoken out loud in order to be “heard”, convey truth and cause impact. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot is an extremely meaningful poem; it is one of Elliot’s best-known works and without a doubt a masterpiece (Hillis). T.S. Eliot introduces the poem with a quote from Dante's Inferno (XXVII.61-66), and with that sparks our curiosity. He then makes statements and questions that perhaps everyone has done, or will do at some point in life (Li-Cheng, pp. 10-17). The poem is a legitimate work of the modernist movement, the language used is contemporary; the verses are free and the rhythm flows naturally.
“Love Poem” is a twenty-four-line poem in six stanzas. The generic tittle is an accurate description of the poem; it is a clue that this may not be a traditional example of love poetry. Both poems have the same rhyme scheme because the second and fourth line of every stanza rhyme. However, “Magic of Love’ speaks of a general love bringing happiness, joy and comfort. While “Love Poem” is much more personal. The speaker talks of memories with his clumsy love. Both poems have a different point of view when it comes to love. In Ferrier’s poem, she describes love as something perfect, that fixes everything. However, in Frederick’s poem, he doesn’t speak about what the love does right but rather he talks
The ABAB rhyme scheme is a pattern that can be recognized by many individuals; therefore, it relates to the message that motivation is needed by everybody. Two ABAB rhyme schemes make up each stanza, which symbolizes the positivity and negativity that battle throughout the poem. Guest breaks the rhyme scheme once by rhyming “failure” with “you”. This strategic action emphasizes the different methods that negative individuals use to destroy a person’s ambition. Internal rhyme is included in many lines of the poem to create fluidity and sound pleasing to an audience. The poem is composed of a qualitative iambic meter, giving the syllables a sound of da DUM. A pleasing flow is observed through the fairly consistent line length and line syllable number. The lines throughout the poem end in both stressed and unstressed syllables, referencing the battle between discouragement and