Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poem is narrated by an unnamed, covert first-person narrator, who addresses the audience.
Form and Meter
The poem consists of 4 stanzas of 6 lines each, with a consistent ABABCC rhyme scheme.
Metaphors and Similes
Metaphors:
l. 4: "Love's fire"
Fire is used as a metaphor for the passion and heartache associated with love.
Similes:
l. 19: "Love, like spring-tides full and high"
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration:
l. 3: "pleasing pains we prove"
l. 8: "heave the heart"
l. 15: "golden gifts"
Irony
There is no instance of irony in the poem.
Genre
Love Poem
Setting
There is no explicit time or setting mentioned. The narrator is speaking about the universal characteristics of love.
Tone
The tone of the poem is both full of a joyful celebration of love as well as a warning that one has to treat carefully.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist of the poem is love and its antagonist is time and age which make love more difficult.
Major Conflict
There is no conflict in the poem.
Climax
There is no climax in the poem.
Foreshadowing
In the first stanza, the narrator, immediately after exclaiming how wonderful it is to love, mentions the pain that love can also cause. This foreshadows the more somber tone of the later stanzas.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
There is no instance of allusion in the poem.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Synecdoche:
l. 20: "Swells in every youthful vein"
In every being.
Personification
There are two instances of personification in the poem:
l. 2: "Ah, how gay is young Desire!"
Desire is personified as a gay, young thing.
l. 13-16: "Love and Time [...],
Treat them like a parting friend;
Nor the golden gifts refuse
Which in youth sincere they send"
The narrator personifies Love and Time and urges the reader to do so as well.
Hyperbole
l. 5-6: "Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are."
The narrator claims that no other pleasure can compare to the feeling of painful love.
Onomatopoeia
There is no instance of onomatopoeia in the poem.
