Motif Of Love In Poetry

The Motif Of Love Throughout The Years Of Poetry As the world evolves so does poetry, and with that the motif of love has also changed throughout the eras. Love is not as pure an internal as shown the Elizabethan Era, the Romantic Era proves to be fair with both internal and physical beauty admired, and now in the Modern Period love seems to be only admired by one’s physically beauty. Through the works of Ben Jonson’s’ “His Excuse For Loving”, William Shakespeare 's Sonnet 116: “ Let me not to the marriage of true minds”, Edgar Allan Poe’s “To Helen”, Christina Rossetti “ I loved you first; but afterwards your love”, Gary Lenhart “ Footprint on Your Heart”, Patrick Phillips “ Falling”, love is shown developing into something other than

This goes to show that love was only ever looked at as internal connection. In Jonson 's couplet “His Excuse for Loving” love is expressed as an apostrophe which heightens the aspect of love and how someone’s physical beauty is what many admire at first, however it is always the connection of two people 's personality that is true love, and that love will forever keep one 's mind young as they grow old. This is shown in the poem when the speaker says: “She shall make the old man young,/Keep the middle age at stay,” (Jonson, 20-21). This stanza suggests that the connection two people have is what makes a relationship last so long. Eventually physically beauty will be overlooked and when one 's true nature comes out it will determine if ones love was just lust or in fact true love. In Shakespeare Sonnet 116 “Let me but to the marriage of true minds”, love is expressed for only being internal beauty, a woman 's personality is truly what a man falls in love with. The speaker express true love for being constant, a never ending cycle of feelings two people feel in a relationship. This is shown in the lines:“ Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds,” (Shakespeare, 3-4). When a person falls in love with looks they find themselves infatuated and overtime loose this obsession

Thus proving that overtime poets expressed love once as the internal connections between two people, and now the motif focuses on the physical infatuation couples experience when in love. The Elizabethan era proves love is an internal connection people experience in a relationships, the Romantic era shows how both physical and internal beauty is what is most important of the foundation of relationships. Now in the Modern era love is seen as the physical infatuation a couple feels in a relationship, and this idea of love turing from internal love to physical love not only show the development of poetry throughout the years, but also the