Love s Philosophy Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poem: Love s Philosophy, Shelley, 1820 The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the Ocean, The winds of Heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine in one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine?- See the mountains kiss high Heaven And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?
Meaning of Poem: Love is elevated to a cosmic force that binds everything together by overcoming all separation and the speaker uses this image to attempt to persuade the addressee to kiss them. Context: Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and Love s Philosophy reflects the typically Romantic concerns of beauty, nature, liberty, creativity and imagination. He was an atheist and a philosopher and, at the time that he wrote the poem, he attributed the evils of society to humanity s own moral failures and grounded the possibility of radical social reform on a reform of the moral and imaginative faculties through the redeeming power of love. He believed that art had the power to transform society in a positive way and in A Defence of Poetry he argued that poetry brings about moral good and can be a source for the development of empathy, compassion and love. Shelley idealised an idea of genuine commingling in love: a state in which lovers selves were entirely shared. He had a very liberal attitude towards love in his personal life: he ran off with Mary Wollstonecraft and asked his previous wife to come and live with them as a sister. The natural images link to the pastoral tradition of pure love in a countryside/natural setting. Main Themes: Unrequited Love Love and Nature Physical Connection Language Repetition of mingle, kiss and clasp Other verbs of intimacy: mix, meet Repeated verbs of intimacy and connection The consistent use of verbs expressing intimacy and physical connections conveys the speaker s premise that everything in the world is physically connected apart from the speaker and the addressee and it emphasises how isolated they are from the natural environment. This is particularly emphasised by the repetition of mingle, kiss and clasp as it evokes an image of all of nature being paired and in contrast to the physically separate and single couple.
Language the mountains kiss high heaven / And the waves clasp one another Personification of nature The personification of nature as physically clasping and kissing itself illustrates the speaker's argument that everything else in the world is linked and that it is therefore unnatural for the speaker and the addressee to be physically separate. winds of heaven law divine one spirit Religious imagery By linking unity to religious imagery, the speaker implies that it is not only natural for the speaker and addressee to come together, but ordained by God. And Anaphora The anaphora of And which increases in the second stanza emphasises the plethora of connected nouns in contrast to the isolated couple. The anaphora in the successive phrases of the final stanza could also be seen to convey a sense of the speaker s increasing desperation. Why not I with thine? If thou not kiss me? Nothing no disdained see sunlight, clasps, kiss the sea, sweet high heaven Rhetorical Questions Assertive language Sibilance and alliteration The persuasive technique invites the addressee to question and feel an element of guilt about their separation from the speaker. The negative assertive language of nothing, no, disdained and the imperative see introduces a forceful tone to the poem that links to the idea of the speaker inducing guilt in the addressee. Structure river/ocean, ever/emotion; etc. The sibilance creates a sense of softness and the linked letters further demonstrate the connection of everything around the the speaker and the addressee. Enjambment and caesura Reflective structure of the stanzas The enjambment mirrors the sense of connection between the flowing fountains, river and ocean and the caesura encases each pair of lines to reflect the pairing that is conveyed in the language. The way that the stanzas are very similar in structure and reflect one another could be interpreted as further evidence of everything apart from the speaker and addressee being unified and joined.
Form: Lyric - poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person Technique Increasing use of masculine rhymes Iambic tetrameter with shorter final lines of each stanza (trimeter catalectic) Effect In the first stanza there is a greater use of feminine rhymes (when the final syllable of the word is unstressed: RIVer, OCEan, EVer, emotion, SINGle, MINGle) whilst there is an increasing use of masculine rhymes in the final stanza (when the final syllable is stressed: EARTH, SEA, WORTH, ME). This could be interpreted as the voice of the speaker becoming more determined and forceful as the poem progresses. The change in rhythm in the final lines of each stanza demonstrates how the lack of physical connection between the addressee and the speaker makes the disconnected to the rest of the poem and to the rest of the world. Comparisons Other Poem Sonnet 29 Thematic Comparison Love and connection Main Similarity: Overwhelming desire for connection between lovers Main Difference: Sonnet 29 expresses an overwhelming desire for the lover to physically appear in order to replace the speaker s obsessive thoughts, whilst in Love s Philosophy the speaker s overwhelming desire is simply for the addressee to kiss and be connected with them. Language/Structure/Form Comparison Natural imagery: Shelley uses natural imagery in order to portray how everything in the world is physically connected apart from the speaker and the addressee and to therefore emphasise how isolated they are from the natural environment. Barrett Browning, on the other hand, uses the extended metaphor of the vine to portray the intensity of the speaker s thoughts about their lover. Shelley uses sibilance and alliteration to demonstrate the sense of connection in the world surrounding the speaker and addressee, whilst the Barrett Browning uses the assonance of the eee sound to demonstrate how the speaker s thoughts are consuming and obsessive. Both poets create an increasing sense of forcefulness as the poems progress. In Love s Philosophy the speaker is increasingly forceful through their use of increasing masculine rhymes and assertive language such as disdained and nothing in the second stanza, whilst in Sonnet 29 the strength and force of the lover is demonstrated as the poem progresses through the trochees and imperative verbs renew and drop and the trochaic substitution of rustle and the description of burst, shattered., everywhere!