Against Love
By Katherine Philips
HENCE Cupid! with your cheating toys,
Your real Griefs, and painted Joys,
Your Pleasure which itself destroys.
Lovers like men in fevers burn and rave,
And only what will injure them do crave.Men’s weakness makes Love so severe,
They give him power by their fear,
And make the shackles which they wear.
Who to another does his heart submit,
Makes his own Idol, and then worships it.Him whose heart is all his own,
Peace and liberty does crown,
He apprehends no killing frown.
He feels no raptures which are joys diseas’d,
And is not much transported, but still pleas’d.
Summary of Against Love
- Popularity of “Against Love”: “Against Love” by Katherine Philips, a great Anglo-Welsh royalist poet, translator, and author, is a symbolic poetic piece. The poem first appeared in 1667 in a collection. It presents her anti-love feelings. She tries to pen down the harmful effects of love that how it changes the happy course of someone’s life. The poem’s popularity lies in the fact that it does not fantasize about love. Instead, it tries to make us feel it as a bitter reality.
- “Against Love”, As a Representative of Love: This poem is about the harmful impact of love on human beings. It begins as the speaker directly addresses love and informs the readers about its tricks and how it attracts lovers. To her, it disguises in many ways; it plays with our emotions and makes us stand on the verge of weakness and pain. She compares love with an illness and says that in love, people intentionally harm themselves. They find pleasure in self-injury and self-destruction. She brilliantly explains how it weakens us and makes us feel insecure with every passing day. She adds that lovers create their own idols to worship. The poem’s tone suggests that the speaker possesses no room for love because she believes that it corrodes our life and takes us away from reality.
- Major Themes in “Against Love”: The destructive nature of love, man versus love, and the power of love are some of the major themes of the poem. Many authors and poets penned down their ideas, emotions, and feelings in favor of love. However, Katherine took a bold stance in this poem and shed light on its destructive nature. Throughout the text, she gives examples of how it deceives people; it replaces their joys and pleasures with fake laughter, agony, and pain. It even takes them away from the eternal peace which they find in their worship. To support her ideas, she gives examples of lovers who make their loved ones the center of their attraction and start worshiping them. Through this short poem, she tries to highlight the weakness of humanity and how easily love derails them from the righteous path.
Analysis of Literary Devices Used in “Against Love”
literary devices are magical elements that give a unique feeling and meaning to seemingly simple poetic pieces. Their clever usage helps the readers target the central idea of the poem. The analysis of the devices used in this beautiful poem is as follows.
- Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as the sound of /e/ “He feels no raptures which are joys diseas’d,s” and again the sound of /o/ in “Who to another does his heart submit.”
- Allegory: It is a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters, figures, and events. The speaker has used allegoric expression at the beginning of the poem when he informs us about the cunning nature of love such as;
“HENCE Cupid! with your cheating toys,
Your real Griefs, and painted Joys.”
- Anaphora: It refers to the repetition of a word or expression in the first part of some verses. Katherine has repeated the words “your” in the first stanza of the poem to emphasize the point such as;
“Your real Griefs, and painted Joys,
Your Pleasure which itself destroys.”
- Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /w/ in “which they wear” and /l/ in “Lovers like men.”
- Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /r/ in “Lovers like men in fevers burn and rave” and the sound of /h/ in “Who to another does his heart submit.”
- Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. Katherine Philips has used imagery in this poem such as “He feels no raptures which are joys diseas’d”, “And make the shackles which they wear,” and “Your Pleasure which itself destroys.”
- Metaphor: It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between the objects that are different in nature. The poet has used love as an extended metaphor just to show how it cast distinct effect on human beings.
- Personification: Personification is to give human qualities to inanimate objects. The poet has personified love throughout the poem such as; “Your Pleasure which itself destroys.”
- Simile: It is a device used to compare something with something else to make the meanings clear to the readers. The writer has used this device in the fourth line of the poem such as “Lovers like men in fevers burn and rave.”
Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in “Against Love”
Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is the analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem.
- Diction and Tone: The poem shows descriptive and metaphorical diction with serious as well as sardonic tone.
- Rhyme Scheme: The poem shows the AAABB rhyme scheme in all of its stanzas.
- Quintain: A quintain is a five-line stanza. Here each stanza is quatrain as the first one and the second one.
- Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of some lines. There are three stanzas in this poem with each having same lines.
Quotes to be Used
These lines from “Against Love” are useful to quote when talking about the nature of the lovers.
“HENCE Cupid! with your cheating toys,
Your real Griefs, and painted Joys,
Your Pleasure which itself destroys.
Lovers like men in fevers burn and rave,
And only what will injure them do crave.”
