“Love” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Recommended: Representation of love in poetry

The poem “Love” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge has many different literary devices that make it such a great romantic piece of work. Things like syntax, theme, tone, metaphors, imagery and personification are just a few devices that help make this poem popular.

Syntax in this poem is very obvious. In poetry, word order may be shifted around to meet emphasis, to heighten the connection between two words, or to pick up on specific implications or traditions. The syntax in this poem can be shown in each stanza. For example, “And that she nursed him in a cave: And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest-leaves; A dying man he lay”. The syntax heightens and describes his feelings for the lady and shows that he would do anything, including losing his life, for her. Hence, in the end her heart grew for him and he died happily knowing she was his forever.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Love,” has several themes. The main theme for the poem is guilt. He feels guilt for being in love with the Lady of the Land because he is only a minstrel. He then sings her a song of a knight. The Lady of the land then shuns him and he goes mad. Then, still in love with the Lady of the Land, he rescues her from “outrage worse than death,” which was most likely rape. "And that, unknowing what he did, He leaped amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death The Lady of the Land;" In this process he is mortally wounded. Another theme for this poem is matrimony. He dreams of marrying the lady and wishes her to be his wife. He strives for her attention and affection and is finally satisfied in death by saving her.

As to symbolism of the poem, the knight also plays an integral part in setting the theme of “Love” the knight makes the...

... middle of paper ...

...ever strove to expiate/ The scorn that crazed his brain;- in stanza fifteen lines fifty-seven through sixty. This part of the poem is very lonely, desolate and sad.

When using all of these literary devices, it helps create a flow within the story. This helps it because it makes the work easier to read and understand.

Work Cited

"Analyzing Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "love"?. Yahoo Answers. N.p., 02 feb 2009. Web. 1 Feb 2011. .

Angus, Douglas. "The theme of love and guilt in Coleridge's three major poems." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. university of Illinois press, 2000. Web. 10 Feb 2011. .

"Love- by Samuel Taylor Coleridge." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 1997. Web. 10 Feb 2011. .

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