LOVE IS NEW
LOVE IS OLD
LOVE IS ALL
LOVE IS YOU
Poetry is interpreted with a collection of
techniques. This can be related to our Professor Brady’s line “No wrong
answers, everything is right”. Poetry is written for various reasons, to
express their feelings, to influence the crowd or just to keep the words on
paper. Love poetry is a way to get in touch with your inner feelings about
the emotions of loving and being loved. The two poems “To my dear and loving
husband” by Anne Bradstreet and "How do I love thee? Let me count the
ways" by Elizabeth Barret Browning use a theme of love to express their
feelings towards their loved ones. A very good song by The Beatles “All my
loving” is a masterpiece of love. Comparing two poets from different timelines
mutually expressing themselves about love. The two poets Elizabeth and Anne
write in two different ways. When reading between the lines, each poet has
their own style of writing.
Anne Bradstreet writes “To my dear and loving
husband” to express her feelings and love she has to her husband. The opening
lines of the poem “if two were one, then surely we”(Anne 1) show
that the amount of love and affection she has towards her husband is so deep
that she says if there is something like two things becoming one,
then that will definitely be them. The lines “If ever wife was happy in a
man, Compare with me ye women if you can” (Anne 4) Anne challenges other
women to compare their happiness to hers. She relates her love to the precious
and imaginary things like mines of gold and thirst of rivers by saying “I
prize thy love more than whole mines of gold-Or all the riches that the East
doth hold.-My love is such that rivers cannot quench,-Nor ought but love from
thee, give recompose” (Anne 5-8). She also boasts about her husband by
saying that she cannot repay him and heavens reward him in lines 9-10. Finally
she concludes by saying that live forever by the way they love forever.
When analyzing poetry, it is very interesting to compare the thoughts of other
poets. A same theme “love” has been expressed in a different way in
Elizabeth’s “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” All through
the poem she tries to list the ways in which she loves her beloved. She opens
the poem by questioning herself “How do I love thee? Let me count the
ways." She counts the ways in which she loves her beloved. She
further describes her love using metaphors in these lines ”I love thee to
the depth and breadth and height-My soul can reach, when feeling out of
sight-For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. The next two lines “I love thee to
the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle-light,” implies
that her entire day is spent with Robert in mind. The “most quiet need”
could be interpreted as merely breathing, in that she feels the need to love
him the same way she needs to breathe to live. She is therefore
constantly thinking about him as she is constantly breathing. Sun refers
to the first sign beginning her day, while candle-light signifies how there is
still light shining before she goes to sleep at night. She then writes “I
love thee freely, as men strive from Right; I love thee purely, as they turn
from Praise.” “Freely” could indicate that she is not compelled or forced
to love, but that she does out of her own intention. In lines 9 and 10, she
describes their intimacy without shame for the passion she feels and she also
tells that she loves him through her complexities of her spirit and
personality. Later in lines 11, 12 she gets lost in love and she compares
it to her favorite Saints loss of life. She sums up all her feelings of love
and then says the only more love she might feel would be that which is
granted in heaven.
When
connecting it to the musical version of poem i.e. a song by Beatles named “All
my loving” a same theme can be understood right away. The very first line
where he says “close your eyes and I’ll kiss you- Tomorrow I’ll miss you” says
how he will miss her while he is away. The song then says that even when he is
away, he will be true and pretend that she will be with him through. The title
itself sums up the whole song saying sending all my love to you.
wow
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