Who ever loved that loved not at first sight ? analysis
English II poem summary
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
This poem starts with the description of the young lovers: the incomparably lovely virgin, Hero, dedicated to the service of the love goddess – she is "Venus' nun"(line 45) -- and the handsome Leander. Both young people are described as having more than human beauty. Hero is so beautiful that the love-god Cupid mistakes her for that most beautiful of the goddesses, his mother Venus. Leander's description is even more extreme, and perhaps a bit bizarre. He is described as so attractive that even men find him beautiful. Marlowe shows his extreme handsomeness as feminine. "Some swore he was a maid in man's attire" (line 85). Later, Marlowe describes him, however, in great detail, with a muscular, masculine figure. This feminization of Leander's beauty was a Renaissance poetic convention. There was a limited vocabulary, at this time, for male attractiveness, and a feminine description was sometimes deemed necessary even when the subject was, perhaps, not as androgynous as it might seem. However, in this case the homoerotic undertones of Leander's beauty are a foreshadowing of a future event in the poem.
The two lovers live on either side of the Hellespont (the strait which joins the Black Sea and the Aegean.) Hero lives in Sestos, where she is a virgin priestess of the goddess. Her duties are to sacrifice to Venus, and to remain sexually pure. She has aroused, it appears, a dangerous desire for her beauty in her many suitors. "Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain/Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain" (lines 15-16). We see her first, in a sacred grove, sacrificing turtle doves to the goddess.
The long-haired Leander lives across the water in Abydos. During the yearly festival to Adonis (one of Venus' lovers) in Sestos, Leander and Hero first meet. Marlowe described it with a memorable ten lines, which is often extracted from the longer poem as its own, stand-alone love-poem. Note
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
This poem starts with the description of the young lovers: the incomparably lovely virgin, Hero, dedicated to the service of the love goddess – she is "Venus' nun"(line 45) -- and the handsome Leander. Both young people are described as having more than human beauty. Hero is so beautiful that the love-god Cupid mistakes her for that most beautiful of the goddesses, his mother Venus. Leander's description is even more extreme, and perhaps a bit bizarre. He is described as so attractive that even men find him beautiful. Marlowe shows his extreme handsomeness as feminine. "Some swore he was a maid in man's attire" (line 85). Later, Marlowe describes him, however, in great detail, with a muscular, masculine figure. This feminization of Leander's beauty was a Renaissance poetic convention. There was a limited vocabulary, at this time, for male attractiveness, and a feminine description was sometimes deemed necessary even when the subject was, perhaps, not as androgynous as it might seem. However, in this case the homoerotic undertones of Leander's beauty are a foreshadowing of a future event in the poem.
The two lovers live on either side of the Hellespont (the strait which joins the Black Sea and the Aegean.) Hero lives in Sestos, where she is a virgin priestess of the goddess. Her duties are to sacrifice to Venus, and to remain sexually pure. She has aroused, it appears, a dangerous desire for her beauty in her many suitors. "Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain/Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain" (lines 15-16). We see her first, in a sacred grove, sacrificing turtle doves to the goddess.
The long-haired Leander lives across the water in Abydos. During the yearly festival to Adonis (one of Venus' lovers) in Sestos, Leander and Hero first meet. Marlowe described it with a memorable ten lines, which is often extracted from the longer poem as its own, stand-alone love-poem. Note