Literary Analysis Of First Love By John Clare

John Clare was a famous writer whose background was not the norm. Clare was born into a less fortunate, lower class family with parents who were illiterate (Poetry Foundation, 2016). Clare became a farm laborer at a young age, but was later given some formal schooling and discovered a love for poetry. As writers do, Clare using his background and what he was familiar with developed his skill and went on to publish multiple volumes of poetry (Poetry Foundation, 2016). First Love by John Clare was written during the Romantic era, the late 1800’s, which primarily focused on emotions and nature (McAlpine, 2011). Clare 's theme in First Love is exactly what the title emphasizes; Love. Love is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an intense …show more content…
On line 3, Clare provides a visual image of how he portrays the female’s face to be as beautiful as a flower when it first blooms. “ Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower” (Mellor 1990). Flowers are viewed as objects of love and tokens of affection, which goes back to Clare 's main theme in this poem. For example, on holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day the admirer gives flowers to show their appreciation and love towards whomever they are honoring. He also goes on to elaborate and add emphasis to the flower being “sweet” which leads the reader to believe that this female carries attributes that make her face seem sweet and innocent. Another simile Clare uses in this poem is “ Words from my eyes did start- They spoke as chords do from the string” (Mellor 1990). This possibly means that Clare was speechless and related his emotional state to the common phrase “love at first sight”. Much like musicians use music and lyrics to express themselves, Clare uses the image of a musical instrument with strings to express how ‘swiftly’ the beauty of the female came to him much like the sounds come off …show more content…
As he transitions into the last stanza he says “blood burnt around my heart” (Mellor 1990) as if rage infuriated around him. The use of the words “blood” and “burnt” directly after each other is extremely harsh and sounds like Clare is mad and loathes the person he is talking about that caused his heart to feel such way. Clare questions love in the last stanza by using a metaphor “Is love’s bed always snow?” (Mellor 1990). Snow at first touch is very cold and bitter much how he feels about love at this point. He is now experiencing the downfall to the roller coaster ride one feels when they have lost their first love. Directly to follow this metaphor, Clare’s next line states “She seemed to hear my silent voice” (Mellor 1990). It 's evident that the female feels the tension that he could not express in words since it was “silent”. Clare goes to conclude First Love by saying that “[his] heart has left its dwelling- place and can return no more” (Mellor 1990). Obviously Clare experienced heart break and he no longer has the desire to love past this point or even experience it