Comparison_of_Poems__First_Love_and_How_Do_I_Love_Thee_

POETRY By; Mark Anthony Plata School: St. Mary, Fujairah How is the theme of love portrayed in the poems "First love", "How do I love thee" and "When we two parted"' In 1806 the family moved into Hope End, a country estate in Herefordshire. When she was only 12 she wrote a poem called, The Battle of Marathon. Her father had it printed two years later. Despite his manner, he often supported her work in this way. When she was 13 Elizabeth Barrett determined that she was of "natural ill health". Nevertheless, her real problems with her health did not appear to begin in earnest until two years later in 1821. Then she may have suffered a spine injury for which she was given a prescription for opium, but the injury was not documented. Injury or none, she developed a lifelong opium addiction. She also suffered from lung problems, anorexia nervosa, and a number of other illnesses, and spent a great deal of time seeking cures. “When we two parted” is a poem of George Gordon Byron written in 1808 and published in 1813 in _“The poetical worksof Lord Byron”._ “_When wetwo parted”_ is a poem of heart broken, expressing strong feelings in a simple but full of meaning vocabulary, such as in other poems like “_So we’ll no go more a roving”__._ In this poem it is too difficult to find rhetorical figures, due to the most important of all the poem is the strength of thewords. Despite of this, it can be seen, for example,in the third line a metaphor:“_half brokenhearted”_; the poet is expressing ushow he and his lover feel when they are two parted. Another striking thing found in the poem is the second part of the fourth stanza. It is the only stanza which repeats therhyme of other verses and not just the rhyme, but the word itself. E.g. “To_ sever for years__/(30)After long years”._ because their relation was asin. This idea will be developed later withsome comments of people that “she” was a married woman. These two verses remain to the sounds of the bells of a funeral, using the appropriated word “Knell”. Also he askedhimself why he loved her so, and people who knew her well do not know any relation between them. Maybe that people whoknew her well could be her family and husband. At the last stanza the poet is remembering when they met and transmits us a feeling of hope: “If I should meet thee”.Maybe life exists before death and they can reopen their love, and the poet also tell us how they greet: “With silence andtears”. Some researches say that the person who was addressed this poem is Lady Frances Webster (married woman) and a laststanza was left out to keep the identity of the woman a secret. It was discover when Byron wrote a letter to his cousin LadyHardy giving her of the last stanza: Then --- fare thee well --- Fanny --- _ Now doubly undone --- To prove false unto many --- As faithless to One --- Thou art past all recalling Even would I recall --- For the woman once falling Forever must fall. –_ “_When we two parted”_ is included in the historical movement of Romanticism which is “an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution.” During the 19th century Britain was transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Maybe this poem has nothing of relation with these transformations, but if we consider that in these times people had to work a lot and maybe the husband of Lady Webster spent a lot of time doing business, she probably had more freedom and she felt alone and the solution was to find a lover. Moreover, unfaithfulness is a topic of all the times and the separation of two lovers due to death or for something else happens then, now and after. For that reason we can consider that this poem of pain is a poem for all the t This poem perfectly can be described for people of nowadays, due to Byron expresses wonderfully what people feel when the person they love splits up with them or dies. This is a feeling of all the epochs and centuries, the loneliness and pain provoked by the missing of the person who loves. The poet has also a relation with today; Byron has returned as a figure of great consequence, this is an historical fate to be welcomed. Now he is more appreciated than in his times, because unless in his time he was famous, he was perjudicated by his type of life, having problems with alcohol and women. But now he was recognized as one of the most representative writers of the Romanticism. .