Essay on "Discuss how two different poems treat the idea of love".
With poems of unrequited affections, of couples torn apart and the loss of dear ones, love has been a theme that pops up frequently in poetry. Both poems Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare and Cold in the Earth by Emily Bronte deal with the concept of ever lasting "true love".
A sonnet is a 14 line poem divided into quatrains, discussing a problem that gets resolved in the final stages of the poem, it is usually about love undergoing the effects of time and mortality. Sonnet 116 attempts to define love by telling us both what it is and what it isn't. The poem employs a simple ABAB rhyme scheme and ordinary monosyllabic language to emphasise how simple true love is. Essentially Sonnet 116 presents the extreme ideal of romantic love: unchanging, never fading, outlasting even death. The first quatrain defines true love as unchanging and does not "admit impediment". The second quatrain defines love by using metaphorical language, describing love as a fixed "star" that guides lost ships. The third quatrain describes what love is not - susceptible to time. The final couplet attests the narrator's conviction, he vows, if his words prove to be wrong, then he must have "never writ" nor "ever loved".
The first two lines in the sonnet is an allusion to the words in a marriage service: "If you "admit impediment" why these two persons should not be joined "to the marriage of true minds". The word "true" implies possessing love in the real sense, where there can be no "alterations" through change of circumstances, outward appearance or temporary lapses in conduct. True love, the narrator declares does not change just because the beloved changes or leaves, "the marriage of true minds" is perfect and unchanging and does not "admit impediments. This first quatrain also insists that if love is mortal, changing or impermanent then it cannot be "true" It praises people who enter a strong relationship based on trust and understanding and who will not "alter when it finds alteration".
