Compare and Contrast Robert Frost's "The Silken Tent" and Lady Gregory's "Broken Vows"

Essay by mickthesickUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, April 2004

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Frost drowns in Lady Gregory's tears

Love is a universal phenomenon and nobody seems to love it more than the poets. Perhaps that explains why there have been millions of poems written about hundreds of types of love. Robert Frost's "The Silken Tent" and Lady Gregory's "Broken Vows" are two among the millions of love poems. Despite being written on the same subject, Frost's "The Silken Tent" shows the love between a girl and her family by the use of rhymes, connotations and alliteration. On the other hand, Lady Gregory's "Broken Vows" shows the love between a girl and a man with random words and few but brilliant uses of personification.

"The Silken Tent" is written in third person whereas "Broken Vows" is written in first person. Clearly both the poems are love poems but Robert Frost's "The Silken Tent" shows the love between a girl and her family, which is philia love.

The girl in "Broken Vows" is obsessed and has an intense desire of being together with the love of her life, which is an eros love.

Both the poems use simple words and simple language but Frost uses rhymes in his poems in order to make the poem interesting and fun. His use of rhymes can be seen in words like "tent"(line 1) and "relent"(3), "breeze"(2) and "ease"(4), etc. On the other hand, Lady Gregory doesn't use rhymes and doesn't seem to care about the overall structure of her poem. But the poet makes up for the lack of rhymes, connotations and alliterations by the brilliant use of personification like, "the dog was speaking of you"(line 2), and "the snipe was speaking of you"(3).

The main character in Frost's poem is a happy and carefree girl. Frost beautifully shows the carefree and optimistic attitude...