Different types of love in Browning, Shakespear, Marvel etc

Hi Emily,

I hope you manage to find this thread!

Thank you for the email. If it's OK with you, I prefer to answer your questions on the forum, because they may help others as well. The additional advantage is that many people will see your posting, and you will receive help from lots of people. I think it is important that you re-read the poems, but we will all help I'm sure.

Here's Porphria's Lover

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2827

My Last Duchess
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2848/

First Love

http://www.firstscience.com/site/POEMS/clare1.asp

To His Coy Mistress
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm

Let me not to the marriage .....
http://www.bellaonline.org/articles/art2632.asp

Give them a go, and we'll help you work on them.

Meanwhile, I'll look at them as well, and lets see what we all come up with.

Here is an explanation of "Shall I compare thee"

To properly understand this poem, you need to know what an English summer is like, so it can be a very difficult poem for people who come from places where summer is hot and dry.

In England, the weather is very changeable, and even in summer we have cold or stormy days (even snow in June sometimes).But because our weather is so changeable, and summer is so short, we really love hot dry sunny days, though usually the temperature is never too hot. We had one day at 39 degrees C last year, and that was a record! There are beautiful flowers everywhere. Everybody feels happy.

So in the poem, Shakespeare is comparing his lover to a summer day.

"Though art more lovely and more temperate" (line 2) - You are more beautiful, and more calm and controlled than an English summer's day.

*In lines 3-8 he describes an English summer - in May, when summer is just starting, we might suddenly get a very high wind which will shake the new buds on the trees and flowers. But an english summer is too short - it lasts about 4 months.

*Line 5 - sometimes the sun is far too hot

*Line 6 - more often, we may not be able to see the sun, the weather may be cool, or it might rain.

*Line 7-8 all the loveliness of summer (the flowers, the weather etc.) will change and die as the season changes to autumn.

*line 9 - but you are so beautiful in both your looks and your character that you will never fade or die

*line 10 - you are not destined to die and be forgotten

*lines 11- 13 I have written this poem about you, and as long as people read it you will be alive (i.e. you will never be forgotten.)

Shakespeare is speaking of eternal undying love, just as he does in his poem "Let me not to the marriage of true minds ...."