Love Throughout The Ages Themed Quotes Poetry

Anaphora & repetition in a series of stanzas are used to huighlight the complexity and impossibility of truly defining love

Some say loves a little boy-----W. H. Auden

"Some say that love's a little boy, and some say it's a bird...."

Is the little boy cupid?

Questions and answers

"Does it..."

Questions asked 

The changing seasons are used to symbolise the ephemeral nature of love and life

A song: When June is past the fading rose-------

To his coy mistress-------

Sonnet 97---------

"How like a winter hath my absence been from thee..."

"the teeming autumn, big with rich increase..."

Sonnet 18--------Shakespeare

"Shall I compare thee to a summers day..."

"

"But they eternal summer shalt not fade..."

Simple, almost childlike, rhyme and rhythm are used to echo the simple joy of falling helplessly in love

Some say that love is a little boy--------

A subaltern's love-song----------

"Miss J. Hunter Dunn, 

Miss J. Hunter Dunn...."

A metaphor of a crab is used to symbolise inability to take a positive forward direction in life and love

The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock-------T.S. Elltio

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."

Believes himself destined to be alone and best off that way

Triple rhyming and sibilance evoke the wind and a powerful sense of sadness and grief

The Voice-----Thomas Hardy

"...in its listlessness travelling across

the wet mead to me here, you bring

ever dissolved to wan wistlessness..."

A complec and varied rhyme scheme and stanze structure is used to mirror complexity and uncertainty in reflecting on the difficulty of loving with joy and constancy in a world that seems to lack certanty and joy

The Love Song of Alred J. Prufrock------T.S. Elliot

"To wonder 'Do I dare?' and 'Do I dare?' time to turn back and descend the strair."

"And should I then prsume? And how should I begin?"

Dover Beach------

"swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies dash by night..."

Comparisons to flowers are used to describe the nature and beauty of the beloved

Now sleep the crimson petal, now the white-------

"Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, and slips into the bosom of the lake."

Sonnet 130----Shakespeare

"I have seen roses damashed, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks..."

Atypical to usual use of flowers as itnstead of exaccerbating his lovers beauty and creating a 'godess' he uses this description to demonstrate how his love is earthlu and realistic and that althogh she is no flower she is perfect the way she is

The controlled form of the sonnet is used with many natural images to explore ideas about constancy amd devotion to the beloved

Bright Star-----John Keats

"Of snow upon the mountains and the moors No - yet still steadfast, still unchangable..."

Althought he weather is ever changing, you are not

Love can offer her a life of bucolic, pastoral bliss, if only the chosen woman will follow her man

The Passionate Shepherd to his love-----Christopher Marlowe

"Come live with thee and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove..."

"A gown made of the finest wool...fair lined slippers for the cold..."

"The Shepherds' swains shall dance and snig, for thy delight each may morning; if these delighgts thy mind may more, then live with me and be my love."

Some people are unable to find love because in a fragmented, broken world it can be impossible to have the courage and self-belief to commit oneself to another person

The Love song of Alfred J. Prufrock

"Asleep tired... or it malingers, stretched on the floor, here beside you and me."

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be..."

"Do I dare disturb the universe"

Love can be so intense and over powering it can be like a violent life and death struggle

Love Song-----ted Hughes

"Her smiles were spider bites, so he would lie still till she felt hungry"

"Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows he gripped her hard so that life should not drag from the moment"

Love can be so wonderful that the couple can feel that their love is greater and more powerful than any king or the mighty forces of the cosmos

The Sun Rising----

"She is all states, and all princes, I: nothing else is..."

"This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere..."

Sonnet 29-------Shakespeare

"For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings"

First love is so insense that it is difficult to control yout body and the whole world seems different, taking the heart to a new place

First Love--------

"I ne'er was struck before that hour with love so sudden and so sweet...and stole my heart away complete..."

"...My life and all seemed turned to day."

Hyperbole is used to express the depth of the speakers pasison

To his voy mistress-----

"I would love you ten years before the flood"

"My vegetable love should grow vaster than empires, and more slow"

"...tear our pleasures with rough strife."