It is clear appearance isn’t everything. In Sonnet 18 the speaker says that as long as the poem is still being read then the beauty of it still lives, which shows that poetry can preserve love and is immortal. Sonnet 147 is a poem that’s starts describing a beautiful person but ends but saying that she is basically the devil. This supports the poem’s theme: appearances isn’t everything. The speaker was deceived buy her beauty and soon came to realize that one doesn’t just judge someone by someone’s beauty and that person’s personality counts too.
The beloved in Sonnet 130 is described in an unappealing manner, and yet, because of his honest depiction of her the poet-speaker considers his love to be true. The sonnet suggests true, authentic feelings can only be expressed when traditional conventions are set aside. This essay will examine the various technical features used by Shakespeare to emphasise this theme. The discussion will also consider the context in which the sonnet was written. It is immediately clear that Sonnet 130 challenges traditional concepts of romantic love.
The poems “How do I love Thee” and “My mistress’ Eyes are Nothing like the Sun” are beautiful Petrarchan sonnets with a common theme which is love. Both poets talk about his/her love for another person. Though they are Petrarchan sonnets, they both have their differences and similarities in their form, figures of speech and subject matter. ‘How do I love Thee?’ is a poem written by Elizabeth Browning in 1850 in which she explains her intense love for a man. This is a Petrarchan sonnet; made up of fourteen lines, contains an octave, sestet, and volte.
In 'Sonnet 116', Shakespeare presents his ideas about what love is, with reference to romantic love. We can deduce that he writes of romantic love through the phrase "Let me not... admit impediments", which is reminiscent of marriage vows. Shakespeare outlines his definition of love through a series of images, which is developed through his use of the sonnet form. First of all, Shakespeare believes that love in its truest sense is unchanging. He writes, "love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds".
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is asking the Nymph a question and within “The Nymph’s Reply,” an answer is given. Even though we can make a lot of comparisons between these two poems, the differences are very evident as well. In “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” the persona talks about how life would be perfect if the Nymph came and lived with him. He is romantic, materialistic, and naïve in the way he tries to convince her to be with him. In the third stanza in “The Passion Shepherd to His Love”, the persona shows us his romanticism by referencing roses, posies, and a cap of flowers.
While in the third quatrain, personification is applied to portray love’s connotation. Love and Time appear as a man. Within the compass of Time’s sharp “bending sickle”, physical beauty like “rosy lips and cheeks” declines day by day. However, Love is unacted on Time’s blight; instead, he tolerates all these impairments until doomsday. Finally in the couplet, Shakespeare emphasizes correctness of his comprehension of love with a strong emotion and tough remarks “If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” Through various rhetoric and passionate expressions, Shakespeare reveals the true meaning of love that true love never alters with impediments or fades with
But Shakespeare ends the sonnet by proclaiming his love for his mistress despite her lack of adornment, so he does finally embrace the fundamental theme in Petrarch's sonnets: total and consuming love. The rhetorical structure of Sonnet 130 is important to its effect. In the first quatrain, the speaker spends one line on each comparison between his mistress and something else (the sun, coral, snow, and wires—the one positive thing in the whole poem some part of his mistress is like. In the second and third quatrains, he expands the descriptions to occupy two lines each, so that roses/cheeks, perfume/breath, music/voice, and goddess/mistress each receive a pair of prevents the poem—which does, after all, rely on a single kind of joke for its first twelve lines—from becoming stagnant. Focus: Shakespeare begins his poem to the dark lady with no compliments about the dark lady.
Romeo is a great reader of love poetry, and from the beginning we could see that his portrayal of love for Rosaline seemed that he was trying to act out what he had read about. When Juliet first meets him, she says that he ‘kisses by th’ book’, meaning that he kisses by the rules. This shows that Romeo’s kiss is proficient but lacks originality, and this is also reflected upon by his personality. When Romeo meets Juliet, Rosaline instantly vanishes from his mine, and in fact Juliet is far more than just a replacement; Romeo’s love for her is far deeper, more authentic and unique than the clichéd puppy love for Rosaline. Romeo’s love matures in course of the play, from a shallow desire to intense, profound passion.
The repetition of the word ‘never, never’ in ‘Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss’ emphasizes the idea of reoccurring love that is constantly chasing. The primacy of the individual is depicted by both poems as both are shown to be alluded to love and are ill mannered to the aspects of
Temple de Cupido, composed by Clément Marot in 1513-14, narrates a quest for love that is not susceptible to change – Ferme Amour. Some scholars consider this poem too artificial, imitative or immature (Pierre Jourda and C. A. Mayer). Other critics examine only one meaning of love: the agapè of the Christians (Edwin Duval, Cynthia Skenazi, Gérard Defaux). In my reading, I would like to show that the poem brings out all the possible meanings of the world love, the classical and the Christian. Lustful erotic love morphs into individualistic artistic creativity, artistic creativity changes into the selfless love of God.