Sonnet 116 and Love Is Not All - 1639 Words

William Shakespeare’s â€Å"Sonnet 116† and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s â€Å"Love Is Not All† both attempt to define love, by telling what love is and what it is not. Shakespeare’s sonnet praises love and speaks of love in its most ideal form, while Millay’s poem begins by giving the impression that the speaker feels that love is not all, but during the unfolding of the poem we find the ironic truth that love is all. Shakespeare, on the other hand, depicts love as perfect and necessary from the beginning to the end of his poem. Although these two authors have taken two completely different approaches, both have worked to show the importance of love and to define it. However, Shakespeare is most confident of his definition of love, while Millay seems†¦show more content†¦These are all things that we must have in order to survive, but even though love can give us none of these things, Millay then goes on to say that many men are dying b ecause of a lack of love: â€Å"Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone† (8-9). It important to note that the buildup of what love cannot do is necessary for the dramatic declaration that we need love regardless of how useless it may seem. This is a cleaver ploy by Millay because although she has effectively shown how worthless love is on a physical level, she has also effectively shown how necessary love is on an emotional level. It is important to note that the first eight lines are a part of a single sentence. This is important because it means that if we remove the repeated poetic verse found within these lines, we discover that Millay is simply saying â€Å"Love is not all†¦ / Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone† (1-8) . This is a justifiable conclusion because after the words â€Å"Love is not all† the author uses a colon, which means that the lines followi ng are simply a definition for what she means by â€Å"Love is not all† (1) . When put in such simple terms, it’s easy to see how this is almost indistinguishable from saying, â€Å"Love is not all, but it would be better to be dead than not have it.† The second half of the poem is very different from the beginning half because the lines that follow the first sentenceShow MoreRelatedIs Love An Unattainable Ideal? Essay1388 Words   |  6 PagesIs true love an unattainable ideal? Do we all have a soul mate? Is love just an exchange of lies for the purpose of flattery? 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