Love Poems Essay, Research Paper
Love
poems are a way of expressing sexual or loving feelings through words. Love poems are almost always romantic but as
we will see, this is not the case for all of them. I
will be analysing and comparing three different love poems: ?The Seduction? by
Eileen Mc Auley, ?To his Coy Mistress? by Andrew Marvell and ?The Flea by John
Dunne. Many
regard these poems as amongst the best ever written so I think that this should
be an interesting topic and look forward to researching it. The
man in ?To His Coy Mistress? strikes me as being a very sleazy, desperate,
lonely, old man. The
poem is about a man who is trying to persuade his mistress to sleep with
him.? The first stanza starts off with
the man hinting of his desires with his mistress.? He creates beautiful scenes to make himself seem more romantic
and desirable to his mistress: ?To
walk and pass our long love?s day.? Thou
by the Indian Ganges side shouldest rubies find?.? Whenever
the man says, ?I would love you ten years before the flood?, I think
that he is trying to emphasise that he has loved her ever since the time of
Noah? Ark and always will.? This is a
deep and very useful example of hyperbole being used by the poet to help the
man get the point across about the amount he loves his mistress.Marvell again uses hyperbole as we approach the end of
the first stanza whenever he begins talking about his mistress? body.? He uses gross exaggeration when he says: ?A hundred years should come to praise thine eyes, and on
thy forehead gaze.? Two hundred years
adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest.?Throughout the entire first stanza enjambment is evident
and I feel that he uses this to enhance the mood and atmosphere of the
poem.? I feel that this stanza is
basically euphemistic as the man is using fancy words and phrases instead of
just asking the woman to sleep with him.The second stanza is short and starts off seriously with
the man telling his mistress that they will both die quite soon and life is
short and thus this may be the only chance she has to lose her virginity.The mood of the poem changes totally whenever the man
over-steps the line and makes a sick, morbid remark: ?The worms shall try that long preserved virginity, and
your quaint honour turns to dust.?This perverse attempt by the man to persuade the young
innocent girl to sleep with him before it is too late and she takes her
virginity to the grave where she loses it to the worms.? He is trying to let the woman know she will
keep her dignity and maidenhead as long as she has sex with him.? Although this is a sickening thought it
seems to be a powerful, persuasive argument.The description of the grave as a ?fine place? shows the
desperation of the man in question.When he goes on to say: ?…But none, I think, do there embrace.? I think that the poet expects us to start feeling sorry
for the man now.? We are then met with
the smart simile; ?Now let us sport us while we may, and now, like amorous
birds of prey??Almost immediately after this simile we come across the
first and only example of assonance in the entire poem, when the man says: ?Let us roll all our strength, and all our sweetness, up
into one ball.? This was implying that the two of them become one in the
ceremony of sexual intercourse instead of being singular and apart from each
other.These final lines are one last gasp attempt to her to let
him fulfil his wish and persuade his ?target? to sleep with him.? I
am not sure why, but I get the impression that by the end of the poem the
mistress is ready to ?give in? to the man.?
This theory is due to the brighter atmosphere, which develops after the
second verse. The
structure of the poem varies, in that the second and third verses are
relatively short compared to the first verse. The
mood of the poem is inconsistent as it contradicts itself between the start and
end of the poem but overall it is quite an intricate and nice atmosphere as the
protagonist spends most of his time comparing the woman to beautiful,
picturesque locations. Despite
my disliking of ?Old English? and love poems in general, I must say that I did,
in fact, enjoy analysing this poem as it helped me understand the language used
several hundred years ago and gave us an insight into this man?s mind. In contrast to ?To His Coy Mistress? this poem was
written quite recently (1980) by Eileen Mc Auley. The
poem is basically about a young woman who is taken advantage of whenever she is
drunk.? She goes on to have a baby and
is forced to raise it herself whenever everyone else abandons her and she loses
her childhood. The
introductory stanza sets the scene in a ?run down? part of Merseyside.? A metaphor is used as early as the first
stanza; ?far from the blind windows of the tower blocks.? Straight
away we can sense that the atmosphere of the poem is dark and uneasy and we can
get the impression that something is going to go wrong. In
the second verse we get can sense cheapness and superficiality: ?Leather
jacket creaking madly.?? We
get the gist of the poem whenever we find out that he male who she is with
hands her a bottle of vodka and calls her a ?little slag.? We
learn of the girl?s naivety and innocence and we feel sorry for her as the
alcohol consumes her and she is rendered helpless. ?She had nodded, quite
enchanted? supports this theory. The
opening line of verse four is, I feel, the most powerful and meaningful line in
the entire poem: ?As
he bought her more drinks, so she fell in love.? Also in this stanza there is
the first evidence of sexual contact when he ?stroked her neck and thighs? We
find out about the boy and his background in the fifth stanza: ?I?ll
take you to the river where I spend the afternoons, when I should be at school,
or eating me dinner.? Where I go, by myself,
with me dad?s magazines and fill a bag with shimmering sweet paint thinner.? Ad
the language in this is very broad and modern the remainder of the scene
basically tells of his hard upbringing and plans for the future. The
overall language used in the poem is a lot more up to date and modern than ?To
His Coy Mistress,? which makes it easier to understand and relate to?and to
analyse. Mc
Auley drops some subtle hints to describe the atmosphere at the time, ?she
followed him there,? which suggests curiosity and also:? the frightening scum
on the water? which contradicts the happy, innocence of the previous statement. The
mood of the poem progresses to become even darker and we sense that our earlier
prediction that something bad was going to happen nears when the line,? the
Mersey, green, like a sceptic wound? is delivered. We
learn that the girl has been seduced when it turns out that the boy?s breath
smells of mouthwash, suggesting that he was not even drunk.? This raises the emotions and angers the
readers and thus the poet has been successful in creating a tense atmosphere. There
is a massive change in scenery by the beginning of the second half of the poem
starting from stanza number nine and we indirectly learn that she is pregnant
when it says: ?When
she discovered she was three months gone.? We
witness the leaving of childhood and the introduction to adulthood when she
rips her ?My Guy? and ?Jackie photo-comics? from her wall. The
girl realises the enormity of her mistake and begins to ask herself questions
angrily and rhetorically, ?Where
now, is the summer of my sixteenth year?? and, ?Where
are all the day trips to Blackpool, jumping all the rides?? A
powerful line which could put all teenage girls off having un-protected sex
came in the third last stanza, ?So she cried that she had missed all the
innocence around her.? Again
the mood changes as we enter the final two verses and we leave the sorrowful
stage and enter the aggressive stage. Mc Auley uses sarcasm to emphasise the
anger expressed by the mother-to-be: ?But
then again to be smoking scented drugs or festering, invisibly unemployed.? Better to destroy your life in modern,
man-made ways, than fall into this feminine void.? Better to starve yourself, like a sick precious child, than to
walk through town with a belly, huge and ripe.?
And better now to turn away, move away, fade away, than to have the
neighbours whisper, ?You always looked the type.??? Through
these last two stanzas we can see cast amounts of anger and regret expressed
and we finally hear the girl?s real feelings. Overall
I think that this is a brilliant poem and is very well written but I must say
that, I feel, that this is a very biased, one sided, sexist view.? After all, ?it takes two to tango? and all
the blame cannot be placed on the male.?
In fact it was as much the girl?s fault seeing as she got drunk in the
first place. Although
I did enjoy this poem I do feel that it is rather sad and morbid to be labelled
a ?love poem? and to be honest I must admit that I preferred ?To His Coy
Mistress? as the writer/poet uses a lot more hyperbole and oxymoron etc. to
express thoughts and views and this is why I would support Andrew Marvel over
Eileen Mc Auley. (Analysis
by???..)