First love john clare. First Love (John Clare poem) Themes 2022-10-25

First love john clare Rating: 7,1/10 688 reviews

First love is a theme that has been explored by many poets and writers throughout history, and John Clare is no exception. In his poem "First Love," Clare reflects on the intense emotions and experiences of falling in love for the first time.

The poem begins with Clare describing the feelings of excitement and nervousness that accompanied his first love. He writes, "I ne'er was struck before that hour / With love so sudden and so sweet." The use of the word "struck" suggests the sudden and unexpected nature of love, and the phrase "so sudden and so sweet" conveys the intense pleasure that Clare feels in this new experience.

As the poem progresses, Clare reflects on the transformative power of first love. He writes, "Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower / And stole my heart away complete." The metaphor of the blooming flower suggests the freshness and beauty of Clare's first love, and the phrase "stole my heart away complete" conveys the all-consuming nature of this emotion.

Despite the joy and excitement that Clare feels in his first love, the poem also touches on the pain and heartbreak that can accompany this experience. He writes, "But when she left with all her charms, / The world around me lost its charms." The contrast between the beauty and vitality of Clare's first love and the dullness of the world without her highlights the depth of his feelings for her.

Overall, "First Love" by John Clare is a poignant and beautiful reflection on the intense emotions and experiences of falling in love for the first time. Through vivid imagery and evocative language, Clare captures the joy, excitement, and heartbreak that are all a part of this universal human experience.

Free Essay: First Love by John Clare

first love john clare

This stanza comes to a transitional close with burning blood around his heart, meaning that his first love has hurt him. He forgot how to walk: his legs seem rooted to the ground, as if made of clay. Climax The first lines of the final stanza bring the conflict between ordinary reality and the ecstasy of love to a head. He conveys his message by using lots of metaphors, hyperboles and similes, which will reinforce his ideas and make the ways he expresses stronger, giving us an impact of different feelings. The preceding line features another bizarre description of the body, as the speaker describes words springing from his eyes. In the strangeness of the speaker's feelings, ordinary love imagery like flowers and beds become bizarre mirrors of themselves; flowers appear in winter, and the bed feels cold as ice.

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John Clare

first love john clare

In the last line, he describes the hands as rain, which is something so small that can bring forth an entire season, just like the hands of his lover can bring out the emotion that the author is ultimately afraid of. The poem we read is in the past tense; the speaker describes something that happened to him in the past. Though it is the middle of the day, his vision has gone so dark that it seems like midnight. I never saw so sweet a face As that I stood before. Stanza one refers to the happiness and joy he felt when he had seen and met that new love. He grew up in the Northamptonshire hamlet of Helpston and made the surrounding countryside his world.

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First Love (John Clare poem) Quotes and Analysis

first love john clare

The poem is cleverly constructed through the structured use of complex poetic techniques in the phonics and sense appealing aspects of the poem. Last night Sharon Olds I see it as love described in all its brutality and the moment is described as being completely lost in a moment. It also does not use grammatically correct words such as "wanna". However, note how several lines — namely lines — are actually shorter than the rest, and are iambic trimeter so three iambs, not four. By radical here we mean total or complete—like the difference between life and death. We hardly notice that Clare is using metaphor and comparing the beloved to a thief because the figure has been so overused as to become merely a figure of speech. Indeed, his blood rushing to his face makes him blind, because he is so overcome by embarrassment, so discombobulated, if you will, by the presence of his beloved.

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First Love (John Clare poem) Study Guide

first love john clare

The cold shoulder and her not listening to him, has caused pain. The two eventually separated, and Clare went on to marry Patty Turner, but he continued to address love poems to Mary throughout his life. In lines 23-24, Clare uses metaphor to imagine himself as a "dwelling-place" and his heart as someone setting out from their home to live somewhere else. The poet describes his full passion and emotion for his first love. A majority of people have been blinded by love. He remained madly in love with the woman despite the opposition posed her father.

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A Short Analysis of John Clare’s ā€˜First Love’

first love john clare

I could not see a single thing, Words from my eyes did start; They spoke as chords do from the string And blood burnt round my heart. Words from my eyes did start— They spoke as chords do from the string, And blood burnt round my heart. He continues to support this with saying how it is sudden and sweet. Had Clare stopped there, we might conclude that this was just a boring poem. While Clare emphasizes that the speaker loses his ability to walk and see in the presence of his beloved, he never describes the moment when the speaker becomes speechless. The poem has an underlying tone of innocence and flurry of emotions as it is the poets very first attempt at love exhibiting his feelings for Mary.


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First Love (John Clare poem) Themes

first love john clare

He was never allowed to come close to his lover let alone touching her. Yet they also make misunderstanding almost inevitable, as we see in the final stanza. This tells us that he heard Cupids, the little angels romantically playing the violin. And then my blood rushed to my face And took my sight away. The last four lines of the poem parallel the first four, but now they feel fresh and real, rather than generic and sentimental. Today, although less well-known than some of his contemporaries, Clare remains beloved by readers and scholars alike for his remarkable sensitivity, especially to the natural world.

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First Love by John Clare

first love john clare

The final line of the second stanza builds on this theme. As readers, we might briefly experience this same heightened awareness. The same goes for the rhyme scheme of the poem, which is ababcdcd in each of the three stanzas. Furthermore, the intensity of his experience breaks the form of the simile. .

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The Meaning of First Love by John Clare — childhealthpolicy.vumc.org

first love john clare

The final stanza begins with even more surreal imagery. See how it works? This stanza mainly talks about how sweet his love was. Then, he describes his beloved as having stolen his heart. In the first stanza, the heart was merely an abstract symbol of love. In the objective world, nothing has changed. The poem is structured with a rhyming scheme of every other line in an abab pattern. The Background "First Love" is a romantic poem written by John Clare.

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First Love (John Clare poem) Literary Elements

first love john clare

Buy Study Guide Bodily Transformation We often use body-based metaphors to speak about love. The poet uses an old fashioned language, which makes the poem have that deep romantic feeling it has between the words. At the beginning of the stanza, Clare starts by writing down the thought he heard while he saw her. The images of bodily transformation are probably the most pronounced. My face turned pale as deadly pale, My legs refused to walk away, And when she looked, what could I ail? At the one of the third stanza he mentions that she took is heart, and can return it no more.

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