Show how these poets illustrate different aspects of love in their

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Show how these poets illustrate different aspects of love in their

poems. How do the poets communicate thoughts and feelings by the words

and the images they use?

The poems I have read are:

Porphyria's Lover; by Robert Browning,

The Lady Of Shalott; by Alfred Lord Tennyson,

The Eve Of St. Agnes; by John Keats,

A Trampwoman's Tragedy; by Thomas Hardy.

A. -

It is evident that in the four poems I have read, there are different

aspects of love shown in each. In 'Porphyria's Lover', Browning puts

across some rather dark kinds of love; obsessive, jealous and

possessive love. I use the word dark, because in the poem, a clearly

insane man kills his lover Porphyria, to secure all her love for

himself, "And give herself to me forever". The man is besotted with

Porphyria, but in an extremely selfish way. He thinks that she is

seeing someone else, so he kills her to preserve her love for him

forever,

"That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I

found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I

wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her."

This theme of tainted love is continued in 'A Trampwoman's Tragedy',

with jealous love also occurring in this poem. The trampwoman's

boyfriend became jealous after she started to flirt with 'jeering'

John. Consequently, the boyfriend stabbed and killed John.

"Then up he sprung, and with his knife - And with his knife He let out

jeering Johnny's life,"

In this poem, the jealous love is basically the same as in the last. A

character is worried about their lover betraying them for someone

else. In 'A T. 's Tragedy', this is shown by the line, "my lover's

dark distress." Teasing about love is also addressed...

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..., "Burned like one burning flame together".

Keats, in 'The E. Of St. A.', uses a metaphor, "Music's golden

tongue", to describe how loud and far reaching the music is to the

beadsman. You can tell he feels sad that he is out in the cold, and

people nearby are dancing and having fun. Keats also uses alliteration

in describing the food Porphyro gets for Madeline, making it sound

tasty, "jellies soother than the creamy curd".

In 'A T.'s T.', Hardy blends in some symbolism, which adds an extra

sense of sadness to the end of the poem. It helps to describe the

trampwoman's unhappiness and loneliness, after losing all of her

friends, "The red moon low declined".

Although all the poems are based around love, and most have this

linked with death, they are all subtly different. Each highlights a

different aspect of love, which affect people in different ways.

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