Selection of Poems that Show the Power of Love
Love Sonnet in Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare (1595)
Act I, Scene 5
ROMEO [To JULIET.]
If I profane with my unworthiest hand A
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: B
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand A
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. B
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, C
Which mannerly devotion shows in this; D
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, C
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. D
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? E
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. F
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; E
They pray — grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. F
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. G
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. G
ROMEO [To JULIET.]
If I profane with my unworthiest hand A
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: B
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand A
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. B
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, C
Which mannerly devotion shows in this; D
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, C
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. D
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? E
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. F
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; E
They pray — grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. F
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. G
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. G
Annabel Lee - Edgar Allan Poe (1849)
![Picture](/uploads/5/6/1/7/56175037/1436722840.png)
Form
Combination of iambic and anapaestic feet
Meaning of the Poem
Stanza 1
Combination of iambic and anapaestic feet
Meaning of the Poem
Stanza 1
- About a long lost love
- The speaker tells us he is so in love with Annabel Lee that the only thing that matters to them is each other.
- They were in love when they were children
- "Loved with a love that was more love" -intense love
- The Seraphs noticed them and coveted the young lovers. Covet means to want something, usually something that does not belong to them. (Angels do not usually feel such emotions)
- Speaker blames the angels
- Points out all the men in the kingdom know she died (the wind came down which killed her)
- We see the speaker's mental state (traumatic for him- keeps repeating his story about Annabel's death
![Picture](/uploads/5/6/1/7/56175037/6471172.png?561)
Stanza 5
yellow highlighter and blue text: Literary Devices
blue highlighter and black text: Meaning
pink highlighter and red text: Structure and Sound Devices
- Death might seem to be the end of love but it is not the case for these lovers
- The angels and demons cannot stop him, love is eternal
- Goes to present tense (his current life.)
- Spends his nights next to her dead body, increasing obsessed and unbalanced
- Love can drive a man insane
yellow highlighter and blue text: Literary Devices
blue highlighter and black text: Meaning
pink highlighter and red text: Structure and Sound Devices
Connections to the Poem
This poem discusses that love can be forever, even after death. The power of love creates bonds that last a lifetime. Here, death cannot separate the lovers. The poem also shows that death of loved ones have a traumatic effect. After losing a loved one people go into depression or even become unstable. We see the speaker's mental state is unstable as he sleeps by his lover's grave. It is normal to have trouble dealing with death. Volunteering at the hospital, I see families and couples saying goodbye to their loved ones not knowing if it will be the last time they ever talk.
This poem discusses that love can be forever, even after death. The power of love creates bonds that last a lifetime. Here, death cannot separate the lovers. The poem also shows that death of loved ones have a traumatic effect. After losing a loved one people go into depression or even become unstable. We see the speaker's mental state is unstable as he sleeps by his lover's grave. It is normal to have trouble dealing with death. Volunteering at the hospital, I see families and couples saying goodbye to their loved ones not knowing if it will be the last time they ever talk.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond- E.E Cummings (1931)
Legend
yellow highlighter and black text: Literary Devices
blue highlighter and blue text: Meaning
pink highlighter and red text: Structure and Sound Devices
yellow highlighter and black text: Literary Devices
blue highlighter and blue text: Meaning
pink highlighter and red text: Structure and Sound Devices
![Picture](/uploads/5/6/1/7/56175037/3394555.png?566)
Meaning of the Poem
Stanza 1
Stanza 1
- The speaker is on a journey to a place he's never been
- The journey is looking into someone's eyes and disappearing into her soul.
- The woman has a lot of power over the speaker as her tiny gestures are controlling
- The speaker is opening up emotionally to his lover
- The woman is very powerful as she has the ability to close and open the speaker
- The speaker does not mind (compares her power to words like beautiful and suddenly)
- The lover is powerful like nature
- Her fragility makes her powerful (irony)
- The speaker's lover seems like a Goddess
- The speaker tries to pinpoint what gives the lover so much power but he does not figure it out
- Nothing he can do about it
- Lover is more powerful than nature
Interpretation of this Poem
The poem "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond" by E.E Cummings highlights the theme of power that love can have. Using literary devices such as similes, personification and the deliberate rhyming scheme in the last stanza, Cummings brings to our attention that love is a very powerful thing and is sometimes confusing. In stanza 2, the third line compares the speaker to a flower opening up. This is one of the recurring themes in the poem of having a flower opening up when it is spring time. This simile discusses how the speaker is able to open up emotionally when his lover looks at him just how rose petals open up in spring. It shows the power of love as the speaker can open up with just the slightest look from his lover. Cummings further explains his point using personification. In the last line of the poem he says rain cannot have such small hands. The speaker believes that his lover is more powerful than nature which the rain symbolizes. The woman’s ability to open and close the speaker is stronger than the rain’s ability to close and open the rose. In the last stanza Cummings adds a rhyming pattern in the end (ABAB). The last words closes, roses, understands and hands describe the recurring message and metaphors found in the poem. The speaker talks about being emotionally open and closed and that his lover has full control. He also says he is unable to understand how she has these powers.The words, roses and hands, are there to bring back the ideas of closing himself like fingers and opening up the roses.
Connections to the Poem
People have the ability to open their partner up emotionally and understand how they feel. Cummings feels the overwhelming power that love has. A personal connection is my high school crushes. For me, I can't pinpoint what I like about them but I know I just do. Being in their presence opens up a new happier side of me.
The poem "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond" by E.E Cummings highlights the theme of power that love can have. Using literary devices such as similes, personification and the deliberate rhyming scheme in the last stanza, Cummings brings to our attention that love is a very powerful thing and is sometimes confusing. In stanza 2, the third line compares the speaker to a flower opening up. This is one of the recurring themes in the poem of having a flower opening up when it is spring time. This simile discusses how the speaker is able to open up emotionally when his lover looks at him just how rose petals open up in spring. It shows the power of love as the speaker can open up with just the slightest look from his lover. Cummings further explains his point using personification. In the last line of the poem he says rain cannot have such small hands. The speaker believes that his lover is more powerful than nature which the rain symbolizes. The woman’s ability to open and close the speaker is stronger than the rain’s ability to close and open the rose. In the last stanza Cummings adds a rhyming pattern in the end (ABAB). The last words closes, roses, understands and hands describe the recurring message and metaphors found in the poem. The speaker talks about being emotionally open and closed and that his lover has full control. He also says he is unable to understand how she has these powers.The words, roses and hands, are there to bring back the ideas of closing himself like fingers and opening up the roses.
Connections to the Poem
People have the ability to open their partner up emotionally and understand how they feel. Cummings feels the overwhelming power that love has. A personal connection is my high school crushes. For me, I can't pinpoint what I like about them but I know I just do. Being in their presence opens up a new happier side of me.
When You Are Old - W.B. Yeats (1989)
Legend
yellow highlighter and blue text: Literary Devices
blue highlighter and black text: Meaning
pink highlighter and red text: Structure and Sound Devices
yellow highlighter and blue text: Literary Devices
blue highlighter and black text: Meaning
pink highlighter and red text: Structure and Sound Devices
![Picture](/uploads/5/6/1/7/56175037/2285125.png?567)
Meaning of the Poem
Stanza 1
Stanza 1
- The speaker is writing to Maud Gonne
- Tells her when she ages she will read something that reminds her of her youth.
- "Slowly, soft, shadows' shows a sense of time that was lost, they think about memories of the past: reminiscing the moments they spent together
- Tone is dark and mysterious
- Contrast the the first stanza. The speaker tells her that he loves her for what is inside, not just the looks.. The last two lines reveals the attraction Yeats had to Gonne.
- The speaker indicates that Gonne will feel remorse sitting by the warmth of the fire
- Yeat's love has fled and was never returned, the ending of the poem emits a tone of loneliness
Connections to Poem
We've all experienced heartbreak (unless you're lucky) and we know it makes you feel lonely. Yeats highlights the fact that not everyone will return the love back. For Yeats, he had a hard time getting over it constantly asking Gonne out after rejections. With some time we are able to get past the relationships that don't work out. Yeats sends a message to Gonne that she will regret not being with him which I thought was brave. Most people who have had their hearts broken don't feel good about themselves but Yeats tries to show some confidence in himself telling Gonne she will have regrets. A lot of movies today all have this element of heartbreak which viewers enjoy as we are able to sympathize with them like we do with Yeats.
We've all experienced heartbreak (unless you're lucky) and we know it makes you feel lonely. Yeats highlights the fact that not everyone will return the love back. For Yeats, he had a hard time getting over it constantly asking Gonne out after rejections. With some time we are able to get past the relationships that don't work out. Yeats sends a message to Gonne that she will regret not being with him which I thought was brave. Most people who have had their hearts broken don't feel good about themselves but Yeats tries to show some confidence in himself telling Gonne she will have regrets. A lot of movies today all have this element of heartbreak which viewers enjoy as we are able to sympathize with them like we do with Yeats.
When Love Arrives- Sarah Kay & Phil Kaye (slam poetry/2012)
- discusses the realities of love
How to Love - January Gill O'Neil (2014)
After stepping into the world again, (Poem talks about how to believe in love after after betrayal)
there is that question of how to love,
how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning--
the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape
of cold wipers along the windshield--
and convert time into distance.
What song to sing down an empty road
as you begin your morning commute?
And is there enough in you to see, really see,
the three wild turkeys crossing the street
with their featherless heads and stilt-like legs
in search of a morning meal? Nothing to do
but hunker down, wait for them to safely cross.
As they amble away, you wonder if they want
to be startled back into this world. Maybe you do, too,
waiting for all this to give way to love itself,
to look into the eyes of another and feel something—
the pleasure of a new lover in the unbroken night,
your wings folded around him, on the other side
of this ragged January, as if a long sleep has ended.
there is that question of how to love,
how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning--
the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape
of cold wipers along the windshield--
and convert time into distance.
What song to sing down an empty road
as you begin your morning commute?
And is there enough in you to see, really see,
the three wild turkeys crossing the street
with their featherless heads and stilt-like legs
in search of a morning meal? Nothing to do
but hunker down, wait for them to safely cross.
As they amble away, you wonder if they want
to be startled back into this world. Maybe you do, too,
waiting for all this to give way to love itself,
to look into the eyes of another and feel something—
the pleasure of a new lover in the unbroken night,
your wings folded around him, on the other side
of this ragged January, as if a long sleep has ended.