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Relationships: idealised and dangerous love
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Three nineteenth-century poems show love as perfect, devoted or deadly. They are great to compare with the modern poems in the collection.
She Walks in Beauty (Byron, 1814)
The speaker admires a woman's beauty, which balances light and dark: "She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies".
The poem moves from her outer beauty to her inner goodness, ending with "A heart whose love is innocent!"
Regular iambic tetrameter and an ABABAB rhyme scheme create a calm, balanced feel.
The poem moves from her outer beauty to her inner goodness, ending with "A heart whose love is innocent!"
Regular iambic tetrameter and an ABABAB rhyme scheme create a calm, balanced feel.
Sonnet 43 (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1850)
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."
The speaker lists the ways she loves, using anaphora ("I love thee...") to build intensity: "to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach".
She ends: "and, if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death." It is a Petrarchan sonnet, the traditional form of love poetry.
The speaker lists the ways she loves, using anaphora ("I love thee...") to build intensity: "to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach".
She ends: "and, if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death." It is a Petrarchan sonnet, the traditional form of love poetry.
La Belle Dame sans Merci (Keats, 1819)
A ballad: someone asks a knight "O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, / Alone and palely loitering?"
The knight tells how a mysterious lady enchanted him, then left him trapped on a cold hillside, where "no birds sing".
The title means 'the beautiful lady without pity'. The short last line of each stanza creates a sense of loss. The poem ends where it began (a cyclical structure).
The knight tells how a mysterious lady enchanted him, then left him trapped on a cold hillside, where "no birds sing".
The title means 'the beautiful lady without pity'. The short last line of each stanza creates a sense of loss. The poem ends where it began (a cyclical structure).
Compare how love is presented in Sonnet 43 and La Belle Dame sans Merci.
- Sonnet 43 shows love as limitless and spiritual, lasting even after death.
- La Belle Dame shows love as an enchantment that destroys the knight.
- Form supports this: the controlled sonnet against the haunting, circular ballad.
Answer: Barrett Browning presents love as boundless devotion, while Keats presents it as a dangerous enchantment that leaves the lover empty.
She Walks in Beauty: balanced, innocent beauty. Sonnet 43: limitless devotion, anaphora, sonnet form. La Belle Dame: dangerous love, ballad form, cyclical structure.
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