Love Poetry

Analysis of selected love-poetry

• Deadline: Monday, February 1st 2010

• Complete analysis of poem on the basis of worksheet (the handwritten one, "1. Gist of poem ...") + information (some sentences) on author and time, when poem/song was written

• Preparation of a presentation for the course (ideally a digital document that is used to (interactively) show (digital whiteboard ==> pen or with highlighting funktion in Word/Writer) what you have found.

• Written version of your analysis on your user-page in the rmg-wiki.

Imagery in Love Poems: Metaphors, Similes and Symbols

Helpful Links: LK_Englisch/Thelenberg_2009_11/symbols

Metaphors 1

• My Lady's hair is threads of beaten gold (Griffin)
  gold=valuable, rare, difficult to get at, special, shines beautifully

• There is a Garden in her face,
  

Where Roses and white Lillies grow ; (Campion)

fragile, beautiful, majestic flowers, stand for natural beauty without effort, perfection

• you're a rose (beautiful,best of all <~> painful if treated wrongly)
• water in the desert (hard to find, rare, essential <~> without water~> dead)
• jackpot (rare; if achieved, envied by the others <~> possible addiction (compulsive gambling))
• you' re my air (vital <~> without air~> suffocation)
• beat to the heart (vital, essential, excitement when the heart beats fast <~> cardiac arrest when the beat stops)
• my sun (making happy, shining, enjoyable heat <~> burning if getting to close)
• love is a Roller Coaster (pleasure <~> there are ups and downs)

• Love makes you feel as if you can fly. (Flying is sth. special, it makes you feel free and great.)
• Love is a prison that you can't escape from. (Love can limit your freedom. If you are in love with someone who is not interested in you and if you can't stop loving him, it feels like prison.)
• If you are in love, it feels like being in spring - even if it is the hardest winter. (You feel young, free and new born. You think that you can achieve everything. A new love is like a new start.)
• Your eyes are brown like the most delicious choco-donuts. (If you can't resist choco-donuts, you can't resist him.)
• Love gives life a sense. (It's dangerous if you depend too much on your partner but it can also make your life worth living.)
• A new love frees you from your old chains. (It makes you forget things that happened in the past.)

Similes 1

• Love is like a smile, Love is like a song,
• Love is like oxygen (The Sweet)

Symbols 1

Stars shining from your face - your looks your smile - a rosbud wet and filled with snow

Metaphors 2

• Your voice is like music to my ears.

= beautiful, pleasant, good atmosphere, makes s.o. happy, emotional, harmonic

• Our love is a burning flame.

= warm, wild, uncontrolable, fire is an essential element so you need it, emotional, exciting, light

• You seem to be an angel.

= spiritual creatures, heaven, innocent, beautiful, soul, god's messages, kind, grace

• You are more precious than any diamond.

= expensive, valuable, hardest material, life, perfection, purity, promise between husband and wife 

• Being with you is like dancing. <

= joy, celebration, rhythm, emotional, sexual attraction, fun

• You're the sun in my sky.

= universal power, warmth, creates life, center of existence, light, glory, necessary for living

Symbols 2

• Love is like wildflowers ; It's often found in the most unlikely places. Nearly all flowers are beautiful and pleasant but wildflowers could be toxic and ugly as well.
• Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.
• Love is like fire – When it is first kindled in a man, small troubles and temptations smother and hinder it; but when it really burns, having kindled the man's eagerness for God, the more temptations and tribulations meet it, the more it flares, until it overcomes and consumes all injustice and wickedness.
• Love is like war, it's easy to begin but hard to end.
• Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.

• Snow

Snow is a symbol often used to express innocence and purity, which is referred to its bright white "colour". The purity of snow is also sometimes linked with virginity and its white shine was often connected to beauty in times when white skin was supposed to be attractive, which isn't really contemporary nowadays, but still comprehensible.

• fever

"Fever" is used to express the writers mood or state of health being fallen in love with the extolled person. Like suffering under fever he feels about the beloved: there maybe a painful distance, represented by sickness-like pain, maybe also confusion or feeling about to get crazy about the person...

Links: Useful terminology

• Personification
• Symbol

Thomas Campion - There is a Garden in her Face (1601)

There is a garden in her face

Where roses and white lilies grow;

A heav'nly paradise is that place

Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.

There cherries grow which none may buy,

Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly do enclose

Of orient pearl a double row,

Which when her lovely laughter shows,

They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow;

Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy,

Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still,

Her brows like bended bows do stand,

Threat'ning with piercing frowns to kill

All that attempt with eye or hand

Those sacred cherries to come nigh,

Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.

1. What is the rhyme scheme?
2. What parts of the poem are there?
3. Who is the speaker talking about and what is his “message”?
4. What images are used and what do they imply?

Andrew Marvell(1621-1678): To His Coy Mistress

. . . . . . . . . 10 . . . . . . . . . 20 . . . . . . . . . 30 . . . . . . . . . 40

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find- I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart.[…] But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault , shall sound My echoing song then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust The grave 's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, […] Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapt power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

man talking to his mistress, main message, seize the day - carpe diem! poem written in couplets (a-a, b-b, c-c, ...) but not boring/monotonous, partly due to enjambements There are three parts: If they had time he would spend ages on describing her beauty But: he thinks they don't have enough time/shouldn't wait, as people must die and her beauty and his desire will not last Therefore he urges her to use the time and live and love now ==> "carpe diem motive"!

1. Who is the speaker talking to and about and what is the “message”?
2. What is the rhyme scheme?
3. What parts and argumentative strategies/tricks can you find? Is there a turning point?
4. What images and rhetorical tricks are used and how do they work?
5. Do the use of language, division into parts and rhythm support the message?