An Essay on W&J’s Love Poetry 2007212442 鞠 静 Since we all know these two poets are great ones in their days, in their poems there are so many surprises waiting for us to chew and taste. They both were good at using metaphors, comparisons, personifications and other means to modify their poetry. Besides all this similarities, they both own unique and individual qualities in their love poetry. And these are the focus in my essay. William started Sonnet 18 with a question addressed to the beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?" and this start gives me a heart beating when I read them .And John also liked such an opening as “Busy old fool, unruly sun. Why dost thou thus Through windows and through curtains call on us?” But this works the other way around, I am impressed by the pride of the poet ,no heart beating but heart striking to me .Both structures are the same except for the language they used----one of praises(or comparisons) and the other of conceits. In Sonnet 18, I can see very clearly that William was showing affection to his lover, an exquisite young man or his “dark lady” or whatever, from the very first line. William used a rather straight way to show his love compared with John. We will never dream of a flea can be “our marriage bed and marriage temple” if we don’t understand John’s metaphor (comparing the elite of love to a flea). His love poems are full of conceits and I think he is always indulging in fantasy when he is indulging in love. So excellent metaphors within Sonnet 18 and conceits within John’s love poems both belong to the same technique but totally different in levels. I think this is one of the most different features between their love poetry. The second difference I’d like to share is their focus on love .William emphasized more on spiritual love in Sonnet 18 but John’s love poems (as far as we’ve learnt) stressed more on physical love. After all the comparisons between the summer and the beloved in Sonnet 18, the beloved has an everlasting beauty and becomes an "eternal summer", which will never fade because it is forever embodied in the sonnet – "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see;So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." Here it seems that what I care is not who or even what the beloved is but the deeply love in William’s heart. Whoever I love is just a path to love, I could touch the universal love and the thirst from the deepest desire as long as he or she inspires me. Though the eternal love originated from the sexual love between men and women, it will have gone beyond it and been transfigured into purely spiritual love and last forever. But in John’s love poems, stressing on physical love seems the typical of him himself as a rebell: “Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.” “Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday, And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.” (from The Sun Rising) “Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me .” (from Holy Sonnets,14) “Thou know’st that this cannot be said A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do.” (from The Flea) Here it is obvious that John portrays love as physical affections with his lover, although we can’t deny that he at times portrays love as spiritual, such as the manifestation of spiritual love in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. But he much more like describing physical love than William. Anyway, their differences are rather of degree but not of kind. So I can’t say they have an gap on writing poetry, what I can say is a tendency. Swami Vivekananda once said: “All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.” 本文来源：https://www.wddqw.com/doc/8f64d07302768e9951e7386c.html