Letitia Elizabeth Landon Essay

‘It seems that poems about the break-up of love are much more common than those which extol its joys, poems that give a fairly bleak picture of love and reflect on relationships that for one reason or another are at an end’ [Croft, 2000:71]. The aim of this essay is to compare and contrast Michael Drayton’s ‘The Parting’ (c. 1593), Lord Byron’s ‘When We Two Parted’ (1815) and Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s ‘Love’s Last Lesson’ (c.1838) paying close attention to the prevalent themes of the loss of a loved one. This will involve looking at the structured techniques, language and metrical composition used by each poet to critically analyse and discuss why it has been used and to what effect. All three titles; The Parting, When We Two Parted, and Love’s Last Lesson have a negative impact when initially read with the loss of love instigated with the words ‘parting’, ‘parted’ and ‘last’. Drayton’s, Byron’s and Landon’s poems are elegies about the loss of a loved one, this can be seen through the use of solace language in each which is going to be elucidated. Drayton uses the format of a Shakespearian Sonnet in iambic pentameter with an ‘AB’ structure throughout, apart from the closing heroic couplets at the end of the sestet. This synthesises the poem to flow, which is ironic due to the complexity of the poets feelings …show more content…
Landon uses a lot of red coloured imagery throughout this poem such as; crimson, rose, heart. Red can be symbolic to the idea of danger, hurt, bloody, death, however ironically it can also symbolise love and passion. She emphasises the fact time is going by using melancholy yet she is still to find a light at the end of the tunnel, she states ‘When passions hold their interchange together, your image was the shadow of my thought;’ - which evidently shows she is unable to get him out of her