GCSE English Coursework (Love Poems) Essay

Love is a common stereotypical subject for poets, which has been used for many centuries. The poems we have been studying contain a collection of emotions all based around the theme of ‘love’. John Clare used the impact of your ‘First Love’ to create the impression of the effect being deathly ill. He creates images such as, â€Å"Are flowers the winters choice? Is loves bed always snow?† This shows me that although he really loves her, he can’t have her and he is thinking that flowers don’t stay forever when it turns winter and she doesn’t love him. Also he says things like â€Å"My legs refused to walk away†. This shows me that he is so astonished of what he is seeing, he can’t look away and she is so beautiful he thinks he could have her. In comparison to this John Clare also states that, â€Å"My face turned pale as deadly pale†. Which also suggests that John Clare’s first experience of his ‘First Love’ being some sort of illness. John Clare also creates the feeling of your true love being forever blossomed as he says things like: â€Å"Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower†. Suggesting to us that the poet clearly states he loves her as he compares her to a flower and the symbolisms behind flowers are usually passion and romance. The fact that she is a ‘Sweet Flower’ emphasises her living beauty as being a perfect flower. John Clare proves to me that this woman, to him, is his dream woman as he states, â€Å"Stole my heart away complete†. This clearly shows me that the moment he set eyes on her, he gave his heart to her forever and when he saw her he never wanted to be with anyone else ever again. At the climax of the poem it turns into a very sad ending, John Clare states that, â€Å"My heart has left its dwelling place and can return no more.† And this makes me feel very sorry for John Clare as his first love experience is marked clearly to me as being something very sad and upsetting. In comparison to first love is ‘Shall I Compare Thee?† by William Shakespeare which is another classic example of love poetry as it was usually used to show your emotions through songs or poems. â€Å"Shall I Compare Thee?† is a sonnet which reflects the mood of the poet. Its rhythm is iambic pentameter, having ten syllables to each line. The structure of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end, In the first quatrain Shakespeare presents a question and an answer to the reader, then in the second, he continues to compare this person to a summer’s day, and not saying a summer’s day is not continuously beautiful. In the third quatrain it has a turning point with the word ‘but’, saying this person is described as superior to not only a summer’s day but to life itself. Finally in the ending couplet he talks about how this person immortally will last, through the ages in the poem’s lines. He uses personification in the line, â€Å"And often is his gold complexion dim’d†. He shows me that he is attempting to compare another attribute of this person with something compared with summer. It also uses a metaphor in the line, â€Å"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines†. This shows me that even though he said that this person is beautiful sometimes they can be too beautiful. In the line, â€Å"But thy eternal sommer shall not fade† Shows me that a person’s beauty will last for so many years after, and we are still reading it today. ‘Porphyrias Lover’ is linked to ‘My Last Duchess’; they are both written by Robert Browning and he connects them by his use of possessive words such as ‘Mine’ and ‘I’. He sets off the scene of a really bad, stormy night, which â€Å"Vexes the lake† which brings the poem to life as it makes the wind seem alive with anger, but this sets off questions in my head saying, why would Porphyria want to travel through stormy weather just to see an arrogant man? There is also the ‘Gliding’ entrance of Porphyria as the atmosphere changes from a gloomy, dark cottage to a warming feeling as she relights the fire and performs an erotic display of taking her wet, outer clothing off. The writer’s use of the words ‘Withdrew’ and ‘Let fall’ made the scene sound like a sexual tease. Porphyria comes up to the writer in this poem and offers him her bare shoulder; He tells us that he does not speak to her. Instead, he says, she begins to tell him how she has come over to him in really bad weather just to be with him. He realizes that she ‘Worships’ him and wants to preserve the moment forever so he strangles her, thinking that doing this she can stay with him forever and never leave him, but in doing this it makes me shudder as he says, â€Å"I warily oped her lids again, laughed the blue eyes without a stain.† This is making me feel like he is sort of playing with the dead body and making my original predicament of him as being a psychopath true. Then Robert Browning goes on to say, â€Å"About her neck, her cheek once more, blushed bright beneath my burning kiss†. This shows me that even though she is dead he thinks she can still feel love and passion and when he kisses her she still loves him. The writer in this poem is portrayed as a calculating villain who just stays in a passive stance as he â€Å"Debates what to do†, Being like this totally changes the atmosphere of the poem as the writer states, â€Å"I found a thing to do, and with all her hair, in one long yellow string I wound three times her little throat around and strangles her†. From this it doesn’t sound like porphyria put up much of a struggle and when he said, â€Å"That moment she was mine, mine, fair, perfectly pure and good† This makes him sound like the grim reaper as he states that she is his and his alone. Robert Browning ends the poem in a peculiar way by saying that God agrees with what he has done because he hasn’t said a word, this shows me that he acts like a crazy person as he thinks killing someone, God wouldn’t care less and wouldn’t say anything about it. ‘My Last Duchess’ has a similar contrast of an egotistic nature as the duke portrays himself as a sycophant as he is back stabbing her by saying things about her, even though she is dead, to a person of a much lower class to him. By stating, â€Å"Since none puts by the curtain that I have drawn for you, but I†. Puts his character in a state of control this also links to when he says, â€Å"Will’t you please sit and look at her?† Even though it has a question mark when you say it out loud you realise it sounds more like an order given to the servant. When he says, â€Å"She ranked my gift of a nine-hundred years old name, with anybody’s gift.† This shows me that he is saying a nine-hundred year old title of the duchess made her think that she is very lucky and he is amazing, but when the duke sees her receiving cherries from a man of a lower class she had the same expression as she was: â€Å"Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er, she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.† As he thought that she was cheating on him and she loved every man that gave her a present but in actual fact she was being nice to everyone, even to those of a lower class to her. In this poem the duke is a boaster, he likes to drop famous names of people into the subject to make him sound really important, like when he says, â€Å"Fra Pandolf† by design, for never read, strangers like you. As he drops a famous artists name into the conversation, he also shows yet another strong arrogant word as he says ‘You’ like being something not worthwhile to speak to, or something that has come off the street as he speaks to this servant like a piece of dirt. After reading these poems, I have looked at the different qualities of ‘Love’ and how it can effect people and their actions and how there is a fine line between love and hate, and in love, hate is just as strong.