First Love (John Clare poem) Essay Questions

Compare and contrast two examples of figurative language in “First Love.”

In the first stanza of “First Love,” Clare writes, “my face turned place as deadly pale.” He again employs figurative language to describe the bodily experience of love at the end of the second stanza, “words from my eyes did start—they spoke as chords do from the string.” On the surface, the two comparisons are entirely different, as the first compares the body to itself, while the second compares it to something entirely different. However, both emphasize the strangeness of love—the first by breaking the form of the simile, the second by implying that the body has taken on an entirely different purpose when it fell in love.

What is paradox and how does Clare employ it in “First Love”?

Paradox is a literary device in which two mutually exclusive things are made to coexist, even though that should be impossible. Clare uses it frequently in “First Love,” describing “midnight at noonday,” eyes that speak, flowers in winter, a “silent voice,” and a beloved who at once hears and does not understand the speaker’s voice. All these paradoxes take ordinary things, like flowers, midnight, and eyes, and make them strange by juxtaposing them with other ordinary things—winter, noon, and speech. Paradox thus enables Clare to describe love as both a part of regular existence, and completely independent of its usual rules.