Attitudes Towards Love in Poetry Essay -- Love and Loss Poetry Poems E

Attitudes Towards Love in Poetry Love is an emotion that has been felt by people throughout time. It is extremely difficult to put any strong emotion into words, but through the pre-twentieth century ‘Love and Loss’ poetry we are able to see various different attitudes shown towards love and the way that love is conveyed through relationships. The poems referred to in this essay are â€Å"First Love† by John Clare, â€Å"How Do I Love Thee† by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, â€Å"A Birthday† by Christina Rossetti, â€Å"A Woman to Her Lover† by Cristina Walsh and â€Å"My Last Duchess† by Robert Browning. By studying the love and loss poetry, the poets lives and the cultures they lived in, it is easy to see why people have different perceptions of love. The poem â€Å"First Love† by John Clare reflects his attitudes towards love. It is a complex poem describing the physical and emotional affects of falling in love for the first time. In this poem, the narrator has experienced love at first sight and has feeling for nobody else. He says that â€Å"†¦ my blood rushed to my face And took my sight away.† This quotation describes one of the physical effects love brings; it shows that the poet is so fixated in one woman that he is blinded by everything else. It mirrors the clichà © ‘blinded by love’. This shows that Clare feels that love can be for only one person at a time, as he is concentrating on nobody else. The way Clare uses language shows that he finds first love an uncomfortable feeling. This is shown in the rhetorical questions he uses. â€Å"Are flowers the winter’s choice?† These are two images that have been unusually linked, flowers and winter. This is not a comfortable image. Flowers usually die in winter and this creates dea... ...ill be stronger after death, this shows an open attitude: that love is never ending and there is no loss of love from death. The final poem is â€Å"A Birthday†, which I believe is describing the love that Christina Rossetti has for God. She uses language to portray beautiful imagery to try and express how she is feeling. This is a celebration of her love and her attitude is that love brings a person only joy. All the pre-twentieth poets lived different lives in different cultures and so there attitudes would have formed in different ways. However like most others they have all felt love in some way or experienced the jealousy and pain it can bring. Their love and loss poetry shows love in different forms, neither more true than the other but all just showing the different attitudes that people of different cultures have learnt or felt is true about love.