Love and Loss in Poetry Essay -- First Love Remember Christina Walsh E

Love and Loss in Poetry Q. How do the poets convey their attitudes toward love and loss in the poems ‘ a woman to her lover’ ‘first love’ ‘remember’ and ‘ when we two parted’? The poem ‘ a woman to her lover’ was written by Christina Walsh. The poem starts of with a question, ‘do you come to me to bend me to your will?’ throughout the poem, the basic atmosphere of loss is evident. Within the first stanza itself there is marital imagery relating to the sense of power and dominance. ‘ in drudgery and silence’, she tries to portray how she is helpless to protest, she begins the poem with this relationship, the dominance of man over woman, ‘to make of me a bondslave’ in this stanza she is explaining one of the types of relationships between a man and woman. She also gives out a feeling that if the relationship were as what she described she would be wasting her life, and tries to give out women’s point of view to these types of situations. She seems quite certain of what she wants in life and this does not seem to be it, ‘ if that be what you ask, O Lover I refuse you!’And her point is to prove that if that was the man’s view of the relationship, that it would not be possible to commit to that. In the second stanza she does not keep it as long as the first or any of the others as she does not want to dwell on it. The very idea of the man thinking the woman to be perfect and ‘one from heaven sent’ is what she rejects. When she describes women to be perfect her tone is very mocking. ‘ a wingless angel who can do no wrong’ she tries to convey that that would be someone who would have no freedom. ‘Go’ this implies how she rejects him if he wishes the relationship to be anything like this as well. In th... ...ith silence and tears’ there is a different meaning in this now, they do not understand each other now, but in the beginning they knew each other so well because over the years she has changed so much. The pain and sadness seems to intensify, ‘cold kiss, chill on my brow, knell to my ear’, these are all traditional images of rejected love. The poems octave stanza and regular eight lines, show the continuity of his pain. Throughout all these four poems the poets convey all their attitudes towards love and loss by expressing themselves in situations of love with others, of experiencing it and hence showing reactions and feelings that evolve from certain situations. They show that they feel love is a great thing, and for one to really know the true meaning of love, they need to experience loss and pain the be able to value love to its deserved potential.