LOVE AND LOSS POETRY
Keats and Barrett Browning have each written a poem revolving around the theme of love, although the type of love differs greatly. One poem shows an optimistic view on love and the other a pessimistic. ... Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote her poem in the form of a sonnet, which is a love poem with a specific rhyming scheme, a sestet and a quatrain. ... Quite the opposite to the setting of a typical love poem. Yet that is where it has a parallel to John Clare’s ‘First Love’: “Are flowers the winters choice? ... ” Keats then goes on to describe the paleness, which may symbolize death: “Pale warriors, death pale were they all” John Clare then writes: “My face turned deadly pale” Another male poet called Lord Byron speaks of paleness in ‘When We Two Parted’: “Pale grew thy cheek and cold, colder thy kiss” The paleness relates to what is said by Edith Nesbit a female poet who wrote ‘Villegiature’: “Your ghost last night climbed in uninvited” In ‘How Do I Love Thee’ Barrett Browning uses images of warmth to intensify the feeling of being loved and how great it is: “Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight” Christina Rossetti who wrote ‘A Birthday’ speaks of fruit and rainbows both can only be produced with the presence of light (sun): “Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell” Elizabeth Barrett Browning is trying to show how proud she is of her love, she is justifying her love for her partner, “How do I love thee?