Piteous my rhyme is Flashcards
what is the rhyme/form of this poem?
- Rhyme scheme: ABBB CA DDDC – simple yet deceptive, possibly a joke or challenge to the reader.
- Structure: 2 stanzas (10 lines each), mostly iambic with uneven lengths.
- 1st stanza: Love is fleeting, painful, and futile. Love is abstract, personified, and undefinable. It seems fake and not worthwhile.
- 2nd stanza: Love is worth everything. Focus shifts to divine love, offering a hopeful contrast.
what is the speaker? what language is used and why?
Tone: Intelligent, thoughtful.
Conflict: Two voices or an internal struggle.
Resolution? Speaker suggests suffering is worth it for true love. Monosyllabic: Mostly simple words.
Addressing the reader: Might be false modesty but remains intellectual.
Love: Abstract, personified, and undefined.
what is the context of this poem? (need to clarify)
- Published in Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885), a Christian devotional collection.
- Published in 1893—the same year Rossetti had breast cancer surgery. She died in 1894.
- had gone through Graves disease, becoming more devout, wrote more christian poetry towards end of life.
what are the themes of this poem?
- Divine love vs human/earthly love
- religious faith/suffering
- romantic love
- sacrifice
what are the possible comparison poems?
- Twice
- A Christmas Carol
- Apple Gathering?
- Goblin Market
“Piteous my rhyme is/what while I muse of love and pain”
- Possibly a joke or challenge.
- ‘Muse’ suggests laughter or reflection.
- ‘Piteous’ may mean deserving comparison.
- ‘Pain’ rhymes with ‘vain.’
“Of love misspent, of love in vain,/of love that is not loved again”
- Vain’ rhymes with ‘pain.’
- Wasted love.
- Repetition of ‘of love’ emphasizes its impact.
“And is this all then?/as long as time is,/love loveth.”
- Questioning love’s significance.
- Love is personified.
- ‘And is this all then’ is short, implying limitation.
- Love lasts as long as time—does that make life insufferable or meaningless?
“Time is but a span,/the dalliance space of dying man:”
- ‘Dalliance’ suggests fleeting, unimportant human love.
- Links to Rossetti’s brief relationships.
- ‘Dalliance’ also means a casual affair.
“And is this all immortals can?/the gain were small then.”
- Rhetorical and philosophical.
- Even immortals gain nothing from love.
- Suggests human love is brief and lacks real value.
- ‘The gain were small then’ has a cheeky/snarky tone.
“Love loves for ever,/and finds a sort of joy in pain,”
- Eternal, universal love.
- Assertive, optimistic contrast to stanza 1.
- 1st stanza’s ideas are refuted.
- ‘Pain’ repeats, linking to the first stanza’s rhymes.
- Oxymoron: ‘joy in pain’ suggests harmony in suffering, especially through divine love.
- Accepts that love involves suffering. The type of pain is left undefined—possibly universal?
“And gives with nought to take again,/and loves too well to end in vain:”
- Repeats previous rhyme patterns.
“Is the gain small then?”
- Re-evaluates the 1st stanza’s question.
- New perspective—on love, life, religion, or a post-crisis reflection?
“Lover laughs at ‘never’/outlives our life, exceeds the span”
- ‘Never’ suggests God’s love is abundant.
- ‘L’ alliteration creates a light, uplifting tone (divine love as freeing).
- ‘Exceeds’ implies that those open to love achieve something greater.
“Appointed to mere mortal man:/all which love is and does and can/is all in all then.”
- ‘M’ alliteration sounds bleak.
- ‘Exceeds’ + ‘mortal’—divine love is eternal.
- Possible answer to the previous stanza—same speaker, later in life?
- Divine love stays beyond death, unlike human love, which is unreliable.
- ‘All in all’ means complete, absolute—love is everything.
notes
- God’s love consoles the disappointment of human love.
- Earthly love’s pain may not be worth it.
- Love is valuable because it is selfless.
- Does everyone agree to love’s pain?
- Divine love persists without rewards or expectations.
- God = love embodied (like in A Christmas Carol and Twice).
- Christ’s sacrifice = ultimate love, given without expecting return
