George Meredith’s Modern Love - Poetry Analysis

720 Words3 Pages
Poem Analysis 2 – Modern Love George Meredith’s poem “Modern Love” illustrates the pain of a couple who do not love in poignant diction. The poem starts with an alliteration “he knew she wept with waking eyes” grasping the attention of the reader and also establishing curiosity in the vague yet dark and ominous language. The lines to follow “his hand's light quiver by her head,” suggested that he was trying to comfort the woman he was with. By now readers can infer that the woman is of close relation and his actions suggest a sexual innuendo. However, the poem begins to show objection amongst the female character indicating “strange low sobs that shook their common bed”. The woman cries slowly as the man makes his light quivers because she is not afraid as she does not physically resent the action but, out of imminent binding to her relationship. She does not love her husband as he also knows of this fact he is hesitant. The simile in line 5 “And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,” is analogous to the helplessness of the situation. The words strangled and mute are words of evoking fear and seem to foreshadow an elegy because of the powerful darkness surrounding the mood of the poem. The cliché it is always calm before a storm seems to fit the poem perfectly however the tone of the poem makes this storm subtle. The irony of course can be seen in the words of the poem. The lines “Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away” suggest that a sexual encounter indeed had taken place at the expense of the husband knowing the truth of their relationship. Meredith crafts a very subtle metaphor here. The words “venomous to him” is symbolic because the inability of interchangeable love between the two has made so that nothing they do is ever genuine and there is no positive contestation. The husband understands that she
Open Document