Comparing Two Poems

For this assignment I have decided to work on two poems. The first one being ‘There is a garden in her face by Thomas Campion and the second ‘She walks in beauty’ by George Gordon and Lord Byron. I will be deconstructing both poems and commenting on them with reference to the techniques used by the author when writing them.

The first poem by Campion has a Sesta Rima form, meaning a six line stanza composed of a quatrain and a couplet and rhymed a-b-a-b-c-c. It is clearly a love poem. One, where the author writes about a woman and convinces us that the woman is perfect. The author describes the woman’s beautiful features, which according to him is full of perfection. However despite the fact that the poems revolves around physical, outward appearance, it focuses more specifically on the woman’s facial beauty.

It is probable that the author is in love with the woman which he describes in the poem. However, it is important to note that if he thinks he loves the woman then his love is artificial because from the poem it seems that he is only in love with the woman’s outward appearance and not really what she is inside or as a person.

The author describes the woman’s beauty with reference to elements of nature like flowers, fruits and pearl. So basically what he is doing is comparing her beauty to nature. Since nature is pure then the woman’s beauty is also natural and pure.

This poem uses metaphor to bring the combination between the woman’s beauty and nature. The title of the poems and the first verse in the poem illustrates how this is done. ‘There is a garden in her face’

Similes like ‘her brows like bended bows do stand’ are also used in the poem to show us how the author makes a comparison between two clearly different things, in that case the woman’s brows and bended bows. To him the two looks similar.

The second poem by George Gordon and Lord Byron ‘she walks in beauty’ is a lyric poem written in iambic tetrameter form and similar to the first poem it is based on love. It looks at the divine features of a beautiful and clearly this poem highlights all those beautiful features. The authors in this poem convince the reader that the woman whom they are talking about is perfect.

The authors of this poem use various techniques for the reader to get a better understanding of it. The first one that I am going to stress on is the use of alliteration, this is a strategy used by poets where there is a repetition of the first letter of a word and this is simply to create an easy reading effect. The second line of the first stanza of the poem shows a clear example of such. ‘Of cloudless climes and starry skies.

As I have mentioned earlier this poem is one where the author describes the physical appearance of a woman, however the irony here is that although from the title we visual a woman walking because of the image that it sets ,there are no representation given by the authors of her legs or feet .

The poem develops the theme of the poem which is that of light and darkness through the use of simile. The very first line of the poem “She walks in beauty like the night” we are given the image of darkness via that technique. The imagery is also how the woman is being compared to the night. Then however the poem adds on that the night is cloudless and the stars are bright. So it is clearly seen that the poems is unifying two opposites;