First Love Flashcards
Summary
Describe the overwhelming feeling of love the poet to the women for the first time
Structure
The poem is iambic tetrameter,
—> the de dum rhythm is reminiscent of a heart beat
—> although the form is regular, there is a hint of wave of emotion running through the speaker
——> example is enjambment continues to propel your eye down the page this technique suggest a lack of control in the speaker emotion
ABABCDCD, three stanza 4 lines each
Analysis
The speaker in first love doesn’t suffer less than the one in the voice.
But differently he is mentally unstable because his love unrequited. Where as I said connects to the context.
His affection towards the women, presumably may Joyce, is so much that he loses his innocence .The use of hyperbole as she “stole my heart away completely”. Suggest that he falls for her at first sight to that point that he loses himself by the sight. That is , every part of love he first experience all goes to her immediately. This is where he starts to lose his innocence for love given to the lady which can’t be returned.
Later on, we explore that the speaker loses himself even more of himself to the love for Joyce . He implies his disappointment in the last stanza, “are the flower winter choices?” This suggest that if the flower symbolise as his love for the women, then ‘winter’ symbolise the failure of that love.
In addition, that pair of contrast that juxtaposed the heat of love with the cold of winter. These opposition suggest disappointment, as if the heart’s desire can never come true.
—> Therefore, failure to receive the love he devoted to her causes him to be physically and emotionally weak; this represent how love can destroy clares innocence
Moreover “my heart has left it dwelling place’ uses personification that shows how he has no control over his heart. Losing it from his possession is a metaphor for how love has changed him . He can never go back to the state of being innocent about love as he was before.
—> the heart is a universal symbol of love. In addition the final quatrain is composed of two sentences.
—> the full stop give the end of the poem a sense of finality his chance has gone and will not return.
Not only that “her face it bloomed like a sweet flower” uses a simile which has lots of repetition of “sweet/face” reminds us of the first stanza and the idea that the speaker was more innocent before he felt the ruinous power of love.
