True Love

As a love poem, “True Love” falls into an age-old tradition. In all likelihood, whenever and wherever poetry has been composed, love poems were among the offerings. The tradition that inspires Warren’s poem can be traced back to Ancient Greece with poets like Sappho, through the Roman period with Catullus, Virgil, and Ovid, and into the Middle Ages with the troubadours. The early Modern period provides more formidable figures, such as William Shakespeare and John Donne, while the Romantic period presents the offerings of William Blake, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. At this point, the American tradition also begins with authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. The 20th century saw a massive attempt to reinvent the poetic tradition, and that certainly included love poetry. Writers such as T. S. Eliot, Stephen Crane, and H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) sought fresh ways to express ancient sentiments.

Love poetry may explore the extent of desire and experience. It may celebrate chastity or wantonness; it may revel in union or pine in separation. In other words, one can see both the agonies and ecstasies of love on display. “True Love” takes one traditional stance in that the lovers are separated by some formidable barrier. In this case, rather than unfeeling parents or a difference in class, the barrier here is age. Also traditional, the man sees himself as completely abject in comparison to the woman’s perfection. Against tradition, amidst all the idealization of the woman, the poet includes harsh elements of reality. Also deviating from tradition, the poet does not delve on the woman’s physical attributes but only says she is “beautiful” (Line 34).