Discuss the importance of passion and love - Essay Example

Poetry: The Importance of Passion and Love In poetry, passion and love are dominating themes expressed by poets in many of their works. Not only do poets often speak of having love and passion, but sometimes its unimportance or a lack of it in their lives. For example, John Keats’ poem “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be,” serves as a perfect example of a poet expressing personal recognition of the unimportance of love. The poem can be interpreted as a statement of Keats’ fear of dying before he has a chance to get everything out that he, as a writer, has to offer the world.

In line 2 of the poem, he states, “Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,” of which he is talking about his passion for writing, meaning before he has written anything that he can gather from the flood of thoughts in his head. In the last 4 lines of the poem, lines 9 through 12, he extends his fear to also include the potential loss of his love. However, in the last 2 lines, it seems he has come to terms with his fears and recognizes an unimportance of love, in the last line he says, “Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

” In “The Eve of St. Agnes,” by Keats, he takes the opposite perspective on love. He describes a character who is propelled into a situation, specifically a house, which contains noted dangers, “Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords,” to rescue an old, frail woman, out of love, “Save one old beldame, weak in body and soul.” Lord Byron’s poems, “When We Two Parted” and “She Walks in Beauty,” are poems that discuss love in past-tense; it has been experienced, and has since vanished.

He is talking about it in the present, reminiscing about his history. One example of past and present in “When We Two Parted,” is in stanza 2, “The dew of the morning sunk chill on my brow—it felt like the warning of what I feel now.” By this, he is referring to how he felt in the past, compared to the same feeling in the present. “She Walks in Beauty,” is entirely about love, as Lord Byron describes a woman with deep passion throughout the poem. For example, the simile in the first two lines, “She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies,” compares the woman, who is the subject of his poem, to the beautiful movement of the night sky.

Percy Bysshe Shelley offers a different subject, but still uses passion and love as primary themes in his poetry. Though, it is not about passion for a person per se, but rather a cause. In “England in 1819,” the cause is a fight against the ruling class. He paints the ruling class as blood-sucking leeches, “Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling,” expressing his disapproval of the king in vivid language, “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.

” In “Ode to the West Wind,” Shelley has given the West Wind an identity, speaking directly to it as though it is an actual being. Shelley says, “If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share,” telling of how badly he wishes he could ride on the wind all over the world. He sees the wind as a powerful force that is able to touch everyone, everywhere. Since he is limited and unable to go out and scatter his passionate words, he asks the wind to use its power to do so, when he says, “Drive my dead thoughts over the universe.”