Comparative Analysis of Two Poems - Essay Example

By opening his poem with “Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove”, Marlowe likely desires for his reader to identify youth and exuberance in the speaker’s tone which manifests fresh confidence and pure delight at first love. The poet might have opted for the shepherd to assume the principal role since his profound attachment to mother nature alludes to purity whereas the flock he tends and the fields he labors on symbolize humility and freedom, respectively, in pursuit of genuine love. Similarly, Bradstreet’s protagonist exhibits love at almost the same level of intensity as she opens with affirming remarks of loyalty with – “If ever two were one, then surely we. / If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.” Both speakers are made to establish an impression of unconditional love that occurs to defy not only time but even space as Bradstreet’s female character expresses – “My love is such that rivers cannot quench.” In about an equivalent sense of ardor, the passionate Shepherd makes his love interest feel special with an extent of optimism that could explore high and broad places alike as “Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, / Woods, or steep mountain.” Though “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” consists of six four-liner stanzas of regular metric pattern and rhythm, a similar rhyme scheme is utilized in “To My Dear and Loving Husband”.

On the contrary, it may be observed that though each title justifies the poetic contents with its dedicative trait, Marlowe’s work necessitates a point of view in the third person for the title whereas Bradstreet’s composition acknowledges the label with a view in first person. This is to distinguish the maturity of one whose marital life has tested and refined her love through domestic struggles as opposed to the other figure who behaves in all innocence and perceives love based chiefly on a wondrous state of feelings. As such, the shepherd attests to this kind of love with passion via speech filled with promises in “And I will make thee beds of Roses ... A gown made of the finest wool ... A belt of straw and Ivy buds” which altogether make earthly perishable objects. Since the fleeting nature of passion is predictable with the truth that the shepherd has not yet come into actual terms with the aforementioned matters and merely seals his sweet passages with “Come live with me, and be my love”, the authenticity of his love cannot be guaranteed due to lack of difficult encounters. Unlike Marlowe’s inexperienced young lover, Bradstreet’s woman sometime after marriage can be felt to have become a person of wisdom who keeps her thoughts open to inspire her husband as when she prides on accounting “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, / Or all the riches that the East doth hold.” Instead of pledging to endow her man with merriment, she lets him discern her great appreciation toward his loving ways to strengthen him by the combined emotional and psychological aspects of love.

According to Kerry Michael Wood, “the archaic verb ‘persever’ imports the idea of abiding continuity transcending death .. the concept of Puritanism rings with connotations of harsh, pleasureless self-denial” about the conditional statements in Bradstreet’s literary piece. His critique of the poem intends to agree with its realistic paradoxes which also reflect the impact of the prevailing theological movements upon Bradstreet’s principles in living at the time (Wood). Likewise, John Donne is found to pay tribute to Marlowe’s work by critiquing it with his theme and style of poetry in “The Bait” which serves as a satirical counterpart of “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” However, rather than placing a lover-to-love mode in building his subject, Donne twisted Marlowe’s idea into the clever relation occurring between the fish and the fisherman. On the last stanza having “For thee, thou need’st no such deceit, / For thou thyself art thine own bait” as an apparent substitution to “The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing / For thy delight each May-morning” delivers a perspective by which Donne sees the likelihood of worse aftermath in a marriage that does not work out due to weak foundations (Brown, & Schechter, 28).