What do we learn about love about attitudes to love and marriage in “First Love” by John Clair, “When We Two Parted” by Lord Byron and “A Woman to Her Lover” by Christian Walsh?
All three poems have something to do with love and how they feel to the other person. In “When We Two Parted” the narrator looks back on a secret relationship and tells us his feelings of when they split up. Then he hears people talking about his lover, but the other people don’t know about his relationship. This b rings shame to his name. Also he has to grieve without anyone knowing.
John Clair describes the relationship when he first fell in love. It seems he has fallen in love at first sight it seems like it’s just happened because the feelings are very intense. Clair’s view to love is very different to Byron’s. He is writing from the point of view that someone has fallen in love not splitting apart.
Christian Walsh is describing a relationship where the man and the woman are considering marriage. Unlike Byron who is looking back at his relationship with regrets “A shudder comes o’er me”; and Clair who’s passionate first love is unrequited “is loves bed always snow?”, Walsh’s narrator who is looking forward and she is making it clear to her lover what she wants in the marriage “then O husband, I am yours forever”
In “When We Two Parted” his sorrow and pain is made worse by not being able to tell anyone “They know not that I knew thee”, “in silence I grieve”. This poem is a secret he can’t tell the names he can’t go into detail and so the language is very enigmatic. He connects their relationship then with her behaviour now and realises why she was behaving like that when they were together. He thinks about if when they meet again he would do the same thing again as when they parted how his feelings have changed. His silence and tears now are because he feels so sorry to know her and loved her. He addresses the poem directly to his lover because it is secrete between them...