Explore how Clares poem powerfully

presents the experience of First love

First love describes John Clares feelings of his journey through first love
and loves harsh truth through the use of pleasure and pain in an
astounding free verse poem. The poet mainly describes his inner most
feelings by using hyperbolic ideologies and various other techniques such
as smilies, metaphors, juxtaposition to show the two sides of love. This
poem consists of 3 stanzas and each stanza has 8 lines and is also in
iambic tetrameter while the tone constantly shifts between ecstasy and
grimness.
The poet chooses his words in such as manner that it affects the lexical
choice, for example in,midnight, snow, clay and pale thus creating a
death like effect. Juxtaposing this are sweet, noonday and heart which
symbolises the joy the poet feels. The poet describes his voice as silent, in
the line She seemed to hear my silent voice which indicates that he is
very afraid and nervous of what will happen if he confesses his love to
her, thus he cannot speak up even though he has a voice. The rhetorical
questions with winter and snow which develops a hopeless feeling.
The poet uses copious imagery techniques. Seemed midnight at noonday
an oxymoron describes his mixed and confused two faced emotions
between true love and its rejection, brightest at noon day, shows true
love and darkest at midnight indicates rejection. Moreover when the poet
first hears her voice,They spoke as chords do from the string - this simile
emphasises the condition of his heart.
My heart has left its dwelling
place he personifies that his heart literally has left him which is obviously
not possible thus creating a sense that his heart belongs with her but if he
doesnt have a heart he will cease to live, this creates the bitter sweet
oxymoronic tone.
The grammatical features of this poem makes a hot warm and blinding
warm atmosphere throughout the poem. Blood rushed to my face, blood
burnt round my heart and took my eyesight quiet away, makes it seem
that poet immersed in love. The word bloom gives the feeling that she
had always been there and his heart bloomed to the sight of her face.
The sound imagery and the iambic tetrameter creates a melodic rhythm.
With love so sudden and so sweet gives the s,z sound making it sibilance
and alliteration at the same time thus elongating the sentence while Clare
wants to admire her all the time. The poet uses the word sudden to show
that she came out of nowhere like a miracle and it may be surprising or
shocking that he may be frightened of what might happen next. In
addition the poets expression makes the poem come alive.

Clare uses extensive repetitive phrases such as My face, My legs, I

never saw a so sweet a face and I neer was stuck to depict the intensity
and madness of his emotions. Ironically the poet never gets to speak his
mind to confess his love due to the fear of rejection and thus his love
remains unrequited.
The poem first love by John Clare shows how his first love truly made his
feel and has describes the mixed and disorganised feeling he felt to wards
his love. The poet also describes the pain it has brought him not
confessing his love to her and through that he show that love has both a
dark and bright side and it blinds and will rob you of your heart. In
conclusion the poem makes you think if love is worth the risk.