Love poems are better when they are filled with ornate and elevated language. Of course, I am more than a little biased, as I prefer the works of authors such as Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, John Keats, and Lord Byron, all of whom used more archaic forms of language. I think that more complicated forms of language show great eloquence, and a capable of containing more emotion than their more direct counterparts. Take, for example, this line from Ezra Pound’s “The River Merchant’s Wife”: “The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead” (132). Now compare it to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30: “Then I can drown an eye, unused to flow, for precious friends hid in death’s dateless night” (130). Both passages are about missing someone. The former is direct
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This sonnet is about the unchanging and invincible qualities of love in its truest form. These lines convey the fullness of his agreement with what he wrote- how he knows it to be true. Edna St. Vincent Millay ends her sonnet “Love is Not All” with the line “It well may be. I do not think I would” (128). The two sonnets end on the same note- expressing the same idea. However, Shakespeare’s ending statement is so much more decisive and strong that Millay’s. It shows a deeper emotional connection to the peace. Millay’s ending, in contrast, seems weak and tentative. The archaic language used by Shakespeare is thought provoking. Consider these lines from “Sonnet 116”; “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments; love is not love which alters when it alteration finds”. One has to think about the implications of the words. They prompt reflection, and cause one to linger on the meaning. The same is true in Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty”. It reads: “One shade more, one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace which waves in every raven tress”(129). Again, one must ponder the effect of the
This sonnet is about the unchanging and invincible qualities of love in its truest form. These lines convey the fullness of his agreement with what he wrote- how he knows it to be true. Edna St. Vincent Millay ends her sonnet “Love is Not All” with the line “It well may be. I do not think I would” (128). The two sonnets end on the same note- expressing the same idea. However, Shakespeare’s ending statement is so much more decisive and strong that Millay’s. It shows a deeper emotional connection to the peace. Millay’s ending, in contrast, seems weak and tentative. The archaic language used by Shakespeare is thought provoking. Consider these lines from “Sonnet 116”; “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments; love is not love which alters when it alteration finds”. One has to think about the implications of the words. They prompt reflection, and cause one to linger on the meaning. The same is true in Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty”. It reads: “One shade more, one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace which waves in every raven tress”(129). Again, one must ponder the effect of the