In Auden's poem, "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone," she expresses how difficult it will be to live without her true love. "He was my North, my South, my East, my West, my working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song: I thought love would last forever: I was wrong" (Auden 826). After her boyfriend or husband's death, she does not look forward to anything because he was her world. "For nothing now can ever come to any good" (Auden 826).
In Browning's "How Do I Love Thee," she discusses her love of another, and the emotion generated for him. "I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints- I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life! - and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death" (Browning 811).
Love is a very difficult thing to manage, whether it be the struggle of keeping the one you love, losing the one you love, or having to choose where, or for whom, one's affections truly lie. Although it is a hardship, most would argue that it is better to love, than miss out on sharing one's heart and soul with another being.
2 comments:
Jessica,
You raise a good point that love is "the most difficult [emotion] to maintain or keep." I like how your response begins to analyze how different poets try to use words to capture this feeling of "uncontrollable" love. This could be an interesting topic to explore in one of our upcoming projects: how poets "manage" love. I'll be curious to see if you see this theme in any of the poems we will read on Wednesday, or any poems you find on your own.
I so see where you coming from and you are right we as humans have a need for love and to give love and that really is what drives so much of the world although as you said it is the hardest to keep.
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