when we two parted

Question 1

Themes?

Answer 1

Loss, Heartbreak, Longing

Question 2

Tones?

Answer 2

Anger, Bitterness, Grief

Question 3

Language

Answer 3

-Recurring imagery of death (extended metaphor):
‘Pale grew they cheek and cold’, ‘A knell to my ear’,
‘In silence I grieve.’
-‘Half-broken hearted’: ‘half’ suggests they weren’t
fully in love, or that she didn’t love him back.
-‘I hear they name spoken/And share in thy shame’:
she has a reputation for promiscuity, and he’s
ashamed to have known her. Sibilance of sh = secrecy.
-‘I rue thee, Too deeply to tell’: he has deep regret for
the affair and doesn’t feel that the poem can fully
convey the strength of his bitterness and anger.

Question 4

Form and Structure

Answer 4

-Shifting tense between past, present and future
emphasises the speaker’s persistent pain.
-His rhetorical questions convey how he still requires
closure on the relationship.
-Consistent ABABCDCD rhyme scheme: highlights
certain words (tears, cold, kiss, broken, shame) and
creates the effect of fate and certainty – the
relationship was always doomed.
-Repetition of ‘silence and tears’ from first to last
stanza: emphasises secrecy and pain.

Question 5

context

Answer 5

-The poem is thought to be an autobiographical
account of one of Byron’s many affairs.
-He claimed to have written it in 1808 but did not
publish it until 1816 in order to hide protect the
identity of the married woman in the poem.
-The account of the love affair may be somewhat onesided, and potentially an unfair portrayal of the
woman. This might reflect his bitterness and pain.

Question 6

Content, Meaning and Purpose

Answer 6

-Speaker is directly addressing a former lover who no
longer shows any affection for him.
-He is clearly still affected by the relationship and
angry at her coldness towards him and her continued
promiscuity.
-The poem conveys how the pain of a broken love
affair is similar to grief: there is imagery of death in the
poem