How Do the Writers Present Their Feelings on Love in “Valentine” and “My Last Duchess”?

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The writers of “Valentine and “My last duchess” have very contrasting and different ways of explaining their feelings on love. The structure of the first poem “Valentine” is simply not present. It has a very irregular structure, which symbolises the idea of an unconventional relationship and the opposite of what some may believe to be love. All the stanzas in this poem are different lengths, which means that she is simply speaking as she feels. There is no rhyme pattern that could mean that there is no flow or ease in this relationship. Overall you can see that this poem has significantly open structure. “My Last Duchess” has a very different structure. It does have a rhyming pattern, which has connotations to the idea of rhythmic love and the standard stages through a relationship. It also has iambic pentameter, its rhymed iambic pentameter lines, like its dramatic setup, remind us of Shakespeare’s plays and other Elizabethan drama. But it is about the inner thoughts of an individual speaker, instead of a dialogue between more than one person. It also shows the idea of a marriage and how there is standard life that people at this time followed, everything was simply laid out in front of them there was one way only for relationships to go. The writer for valentine uses very unusual language to express his ideas. He says “I give you an onion”, this is considered abstract symbolism because he is taking something that is never associated with love and claiming it to be more meaningful than “a cute card or a kissogram”, he sees them as cliché and not real. The writer also talks of the layers of an onion as unveiling love, “like the careful undressing of love”. This symbolizes the idea that love gets stronger as time goes on and not to expect everything to happen at once. On the other hand “My last duchess” has contrasting language to this. He uses the idea of
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