And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.
To me the author is saying that youth does not know what love is. We are quick to say that we love another but we have no idea what that connection entails.
ReplyDeleteyeah i am totally with gilbert on this one, you are completely right in pointing out that the author is saying that a lot of youths dont reely understand the complete ramifications of being in "love" whereas we think we know everything about it. in fact that only shows our ignorance
ReplyDeleteAgh i hate when people say eactly what i feel lol. We always claim to love each other. You know you have those couples who are together for two weeks and claim to have this undeniable love for each other. Then they break up on day 15. I think thats what Keats, my favorite old school poet, is talking about in this poem.
ReplyDeleteI like that the poem is basically a sequence of metaphors one after the other comparing love to various things as it attemps to define the word through the comparisons. I also agree that the author is calling young love foolish because what we now call "puppy love" can sometimes be just very extreme emotions and naive feelings that can turn out to not be true love in many occasions.
ReplyDeleteBeaver hats! What did John Keats know of beaver hats? And what did they look like in his day?
ReplyDelete