Poetry & Analysis
Selected Poems
Sad PoemsFarewell Love and All Thy Laws Forever
Farewell Love and all thy laws for ever,
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more;
Senec and Plato call me from thy lore
To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavour.
In blind error when I did persever,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Hath taught me to set in trifles no store
And scape forth, since liberty is lever.
Therefore farewell, go trouble younger hearts,
And in me claim no more authority;
With idle youth go use thy property
And thereon spend thy many brittle darts.
For hitherto though I have lost all my time,
Me lusteth no longer rotten boughs to climb.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker renounces love after pain and rejection, trying to recover freedom from emotional disappointment.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Letting go: The speaker rejects love’s power.
- Love as a trap: Hooks and darts suggest injury.
- Emotional recovery: The speaker wants distance from old pain.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is severe, weary, and defensive. The mood is bitter but self-protective.
They Flee From Me
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithal sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this?
It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned through my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker remembers affection that has turned into abandonment, making the poem a sharp reflection on being forgotten.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Abandonment: A former lover no longer seeks the speaker.
- Change in love: Intimacy becomes distance.
- Betrayal: The speaker feels unfairly discarded.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is wounded and ironic. The mood is intimate but resentful.
A Broken Appointment
You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.
You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?
Overview Short Summary
The speaker is hurt not only because the beloved does not come, but because even compassion fails to appear.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Disappointment: The missed meeting becomes a symbol of emotional absence.
- Unreturned love: The speaker knows the beloved does not love him.
- Compassion: The deeper wound is the lack of kindness.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is wounded and controlled. The mood is lonely, disappointed, and deeply human.
Neutral Tones
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
Overview Short Summary
The poem remembers a relationship’s emotional death through a bleak winter landscape of gray leaves, white sun, and bitter silence.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Love ending: The meeting shows a relationship already drained of warmth.
- Bleak imagery: Winter, gray leaves, and a white sun mirror emotional emptiness.
- Bitter memory: The scene remains fixed in the speaker’s mind.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is bitter, bleak, and restrained. The mood is cold and emotionally exhausted.
I Shall Not Care
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker imagines a future where the beloved’s sorrow arrives too late and no longer has power over her.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Late regret: The beloved may grieve only after the speaker is gone.
- Emotional coldness: Death becomes a form of release from hurt.
- Broken heart: The poem turns pain into final silence.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is cool, wounded, and quietly vengeful. The mood is short, sharp, and sad.
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