“IT IS THE HOUR”

Lord Byron

It is the hour when from the boughs

The nightingale's high note is heard;

It is the hour -- when lover's vows

Seem sweet in every whisper'd word;

And gentle winds and waters near,

Make music to the lonely ear.

Each flower the dews have lightly wet,

And in the sky the stars are met,

And on the wave is deeper blue,

And on the leaf a browner hue,

And in the Heaven that clear obscure

So softly dark, and darkly pure,

That follows the decline of day

As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

“DESIRE”

Samuel T. Coleridge

Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.

First Poem: - Title: “It is the hour”

-Author: Lord Byron

-Source: http://www.uv.es/fores/poesia/

Second Poem: - Title: “Desire”

- Author: Samuel T. Coleridge

- Source: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/lbyron/bl-lbyron-itisthehour.htm

I’m going to compare the poems “It is the hour” and “Desire” because they speak about love. We will see in these poems the different ways to express similar feelings.

Both poems have simple structures. The first one has only one stanza composed of fourteen verses. I can’t distinguish several parts because the entire poem is a continuous description of a lovers’ moment. The four first verses have a phonetic rhyme and the rest of the poem, visual phonetic rhyme. Its structure is A-B-A-B-C-C-D-D-E-E-F-F-G-G.

The second poem has also only one stanza, but it’s composed only of four verses. It’s also a description, but it’s different. In this case, it is more technical than the first one, in which the description is more sentimental. The rhyme of the second poem is phonetic and visual. Its structure is A-A-B-B.

The title “It is the hour” shows a moment, we can think that the author will speak about a specific moment, in this case, the moment to love a person and all the things that happen in. The verbal tense used is always the present simple, because the poet describes a present situation which is always like he says. The title “Desire” shows us directly what the author is going to talk about. He is telling us his particular description and vision about desire, what desire means to him, his point of view. He also uses the present simple to describe it, but in this case the description is different, it is like a “dictionary’s definition”. It contains few details; it is more direct and simpler than the first poem.

The poem by Byron is beautiful if I compare it with the poem by Coleridge. The first one is full of situations and descriptions that make it easy and pleasant to read. It is a poem addressed to people who are in love. It’s a glad poem overdone of ornaments typical of the Romantics poets. We can find figures like the chant or a nightingale, the gentle winds, the music, the flowers, the dew, the stars, the moon… The poem by Coleridge doesn’t have all these things. It’s more serious, but at the same time it is romantic. It transmits another kind of sensation, when you read it you feel that this poem doesn’t look to transmit the sensations of love like the first poem; this is more direct, more shocking, it’s like a moral in the tales, an explanation of something.

In the poem by Byron we can find a lot of literary figures. Metaphors like the “vows seems sweet”, “gentle wind”, “the lonely ear”, “the stars are met”, “the wave is deeper blue”, and “the twilight melts”. We can also find some contradictions: the author says that Heaven is “clear obscure”, it’s described by two opposed elements. Then we find “the softly dark”, two elements also different contrasting with “darkly pure”, the author is playing on words.

The poem by Coleridge is poor in this sense. It has also some metaphors: “love burns”, “the language of the heart” (here the author gives love human aspects), but he doesn’t need these resorts to express what he wants to say. He is clearer, shorter and more direct than Byron.

In his poem, Byron understands love as a big expression of a very important feeling, like something wonderful, very special, an only thing which only can happen in a concrete moment when everything in the world turns around it. He shows us love as something natural and spontaneous and that’s the reason why he introduces natural elements like a nightingale, music, stars… which transmit calm and help us to feel good.

Coleridge doesn’t try to making feel us better; he only wants to tell his reflection about love. For him, true love becomes desire when it’s in its highest expression, it’s like the top of love, and the highest moment you can arrive when you are in love. He tells us that this feeling comes from our nobler part, it’s authentic, it’s true, “the language of our hearts”, it’s what we are made of, it’s “the reflex of our earthly frame”.

In my opinion, each poet needs his sources of inspiration and each one finds it in different places, in different ways. For example, Byron has used nature and he has expressed the things using natural elements and Coleridge has reflected on a feeling and he has told the things like he believes them. He has told it looking inside himself. Both poets feel love, but the first one is more fantastic, he uses his imagination, is charmed, and the second one is more realistic, he doesn’t try lie to nobody.