Love poetry Anthology - OVERVIEW Flashcards
1
Q
Overview:
‘Whoso List to Hunt’ by Sir Thomas Wyatt
A
- sonnet that talks about a hind that is impossible to be captured.
- In the first section the poet refers to his mental state after following the hind before.
- It was a fruitless venture that he undertook. Neither he nor others can catch it.
- The poet became so exhausted that he says it was like catching air with a net.
- It soon becomes evident the deer is a woman and the speaker: one of her suitors.
- However, in the sestet, the poet provides the reason. Here, he says why the hind can’t be caught. As it belongs to Caesar, a likely reference to Henry VIII and already his property.
- So, those who are trying to catch it, can’t own the creature.
2
Q
Overview
Sonnet 116
By
William Shakespeare
A
- He compares love to a star that is always seen and never changing.
- It is real and permanent, and it is something on which a person can count.
- Even though the people in love may change as time passes, their love will not.
- The speaker closes by saying that no man has ever truly loved before if he is wrong about this.
3
Q
Overview
‘The Flea’ by John Donne
A
- In the very first line of ‘The Flea,’ the poet-lover asks his beloved to observe the flea carefully.
- She should notice that first, it sucked his blood and then hers, and in this way, their blood mingles in its body, as they do in sexual intercourse.
- The flea has enjoyed union with her, without any courtship or marriage.
- Yet this is not considered any loss of honour; there is neither any sin, nor shame, nor loss of virginity in it.
- In this respect, the flea is superior to them.
- She can do, i.e. enjoy the pleasure of physical union, which the lovers cannot enjoy prior to marriage.
4
Q
Overview:
To His Coy Mistress’ by Andrew Marvell
A
- details the efforts of a man towards insisting on his lover’s affection.
- The unnamed “Coy Mistress” refuses to sleep with the gentleman in question, and his response is to tell her that, had he enough time, he could spend entire centuries admiring her beauty and her innocence.
- However, human life is short, he does not have enough time, and so they should enjoy each other now while they still can, as no-one in death can embrace or feel pleasure.
- Through loving one another, they can make the most of their brief time on earth, and thus make something of themselves on earth.
5
Q
Overview
The Scrutiny
By
Richard Lovelace
A
- ‘The Scrutiny’ by Richard Lovelace contains a speaker’s explanation for why he is ending a short-term, committed relationship in favor of meeting more women
- The poem begins with the speaker telling his lover that although he swore to love her twelve hours ago, he no longer does.
- This commitment was not a real one. It was only something he said in passing, on a whim.
- Clearly, the lover did not feel the same way. She believed he was genuine and he spends the rest of the poem trying to explain his position.
- He is choosing to leave her, not because she isn’t beautiful, but because he wants to seek out more gems, or women, like a “minerallist.”
- By the time the speaker gets to the end of the poem, he has informed the listener that he might return to her if he gets bored with the variety the world has to offer.
6
Q
Overview
Absent from thee
By John Wilmot
A
- ‘Absent from thee’ by John Wilmot is a satirical poem that makes light of traditional love poetry by speaking on serial unfaithfulness.
- The poem begins with the speaker stating that he is separated from the one he loves, the intended listener of the poem. While they are apart he is miserable. He languishes about, unsure what to do with himself.
- But, that’s not quite true. It is revealed that its the speaker’s own fault they are separate. He tells the listener not to ask him when he’s going to come back as he doesn’t know.
- The speaker is unable to resist the sexual urges plaguing his every waking moment.
- In the next quatrain, he asks the listener that she let him “fly” and explore these urges, which he refers to as “torments.” He thinks that seeking them out will take some of the pressure off his heart. These lines are comical in that it’s clear the speaker has indulged more than once.
- The poem concludes with the speaker admitting that he’s likely never going to change.
7
Q
Overview
The Garden of Love
By
William Blake
A
- Blake firmly believed that love cannot be sanctified by religion.
- For Blake, sexuality and instinct are holy, the world of institutionalized religion turns this instinct into imprisonment and engenders hypocrisy.
- Those rules, which forbid the celebration of the body, kill life itself.
- Here, in ‘The Garden of Love‘, the poet rebels against the idea of original sin.
- Man was expelled for eating of the fruit of knowledge and, cast out of Eden, was shamed by sexuality.
- In the poem, the poet subverts orthodoxy and the patriarchal authority figures of God and his Priests.
- A contemporary reference linked with the poem is that of the Marriage Act of 1753, passed by Lord Hardwicke. These Acts stipulated that all marriages had to be solemnized according to the rules of the Church of England in the Parish Church of one of the parties in the presence of a clergyman and two witnesses.
- For him, each prohibition created repression, therefore in ‘The Garden of Love,’ we see a bleak, unproductive landscape of unfulfilled yearning where sterile resentment, fear, guilt, and joylessness replace the open freedom of innocence.
8
Q
Overview
Ae Fond Kiss
By Robert Burns
A
- ‘Ae Fond Kiss‘ by Robert Burns tells of the unfortunate parting of two lovers and a speaker’s depression over the many parts of his life he is losing.
- The poem begins with the speaker bidding his lover farewell and, at the same time, mourning her departure.
- He does not regret this relationship, even though sometimes he is troubled by it. Any action he took with this person was not his fault; he couldn’t resist her.
- Burns concludes the poem with the speaker talking through all the positive things his lover brought to him, from peace to pleasure.
- He has not come to terms with the loss by the end; instead, the first lines of the poem are repeated to create a circular lyric.
9
Q
Overview
She Walks in Beauty
By
Lord Byron
A
- Scholars believe that ‘She Walks in Beauty‘ by Lord Byron was written when the poet met his cousin, Mrs. Anne Beatrix Wilmont.
- The speaker spends the lines celebrating the beauty of one woman.
- He compares her beauty to the night rather than the day. The latter is suggested to be “gaudy,” and the “lady” certainly isn’t.
- The speaker describes different aspects of the woman, like her hair and skin.
- She is the image of peaceful beauty.
- The woman is unaware of the impact that she’s had on the speaker, who is also the poet, by the end of ‘She Walks in Beauty.’ The speaker is interested in the woman’s inner beauty as well as her outer beauty or physical beauty.
10
Q
Overview
Remember
By
Christina Rossetti
A
- ‘Remember’ by Christina Rossetti addresses a couple’s future and the speaker’s desire to be remembered, but not if it causes her lover sadness.
- Encourages the unseen reader to remember her after her death, and it is only near the end of the poem that the narrator changes her mind (one can assume that the narrator is Rossetti herself) and allows him to forget her.
- However, in the first lines of this poem, the speaker begins by asking the listener, who is presumably her lover, to remember her when she dies.
- This is something that she repeats several times, always hoping that he won’t forget her when she’s gone.
- Their love will remain a light in the darkness.
11
Q
Overview
The Ruined Maid
By
Thomas Hardy
A
- As a Victorian man, Hardy knew the harsh double standard that was placed on men and women.
- While women were expected to be virtuous and pure, men could do whatever they liked.
- When a woman had sex outside of marriage, she was ruined. When a man had sex outside of marriage- well, that was just the norm.
- Hardy’s poem, ‘The Ruined Maid,’ uses the voice of a woman who has been “ruined” in the eyes of society. She has no more respect and probably little to no chance of marriage.
- Using the subtle implications of this Maid’s life, Hardy points out the difference between the expectations placed on men and women, and by doing so he speaks up for women during a time when they could not speak up for themselves.
12
Q
Overview
At an Inn
By
Thomas Hardy
A
- The poem begins with the speaker describing how he and his listener were once staying at an inn.
- As soon as they came into the building the employees smiled at one another, believing that the two were a couple.
- Throughout their whole stay, they were treated with a great warmth that encouraged them to be together, but they could not be. - They were not in love.
- Later on in the text, the speaker mourns the fact that at that moment he and his companion were unable to take advantage of the situation.
- In the next section, the speaker describes how time has passed and their emotions have changed.
- They were once not what they seemed, and now they are what they seemed then.
- Unfortunately, even though they are in love, they are unable to be together.
13
Q
Overview
Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
By Ernest Dowson
A
- ‘Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae’ by Ernest Dowson tells of a speaker’s unending passion for a woman he can’t have.
- The poem begins with the speaker describing a night he spent with a lover.
- Although this person was beautiful and filled with passion, his thoughts were with another.
- Dowson’s speaker repeats in each stanza a line directed at Cynara. He restates his loyalty to her throughout all the changing years of his life. She is the only thing that has remained the same.
The Title
* The title of this piece comes from Horace’s Odes, Book 4,1.
* It translates to: “I am not as I was in the reign of good Cinara.”
* The lines refer to a speaker who has moved past the strongest and most poignant days of his life.
* There is something lacking in him that he is still coming to terms with.
14
Q
Overview
La Belle Dame sans Merci
By
John Keats
A
- ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ by John Keats is a beautiful poem about a fairy who condemns a knight after seducing him with her singing and looks.
- The poem presents the intricate workings of the human psyche when faced with abandonment and loss.
- The departure of the lady disturbs the knight, leaving him with a kind of psychological trauma, likely PTSD.
- The pain of his loss and ensuing trauma impacts the knight’s psyche as he finds himself entangled in a perpetual state of psychological torment that drains the very essence of his being.
- He seems dissociated from reality, immersed in his own fantasies.
- the lady’s influence extends beyond the knight’s imagination, enveloping him in an illusory landscape where imagination merges with reality as the knight is trapped within the intricate web of his own mental labyrinth.
