A Comparison of Love According to Browning, Dickinson, Shakespeare and Harris :: Comparison Compare Contrast Essays

Love According to Browning, Dickinson, Shakespeare and Harris Men and women are very different creatures. We express our emotions differently. Women are typically ready to marry, settle down and have children much earlier than men. Men tend to want to experience life before settling. Yet, there is one thing we have in common. In relationships, men and women want to be loved for the person they are and for the rest of their lives. When people begin dating, they are usually playing the field. Few have a strategy for finding their life mate. It is something that happens over time and as you continue to see that person and get to know them, a bond builds that is not easily broken. This is demonstrated in "Wild Nights - Wild Nights!" By Emily Dickinson. "Futile - the winds-/ to a heart in port-/ Done with the compass/ Done with the chart" (line 5-8). No matter how hard outside forces try to tempt you away, you are finished searching for your true love. You have found it and are holding fast. We are all initially searching for romantic love that will hold fast through a lifetime. Romantic love is defined as love that is unrealistic, fanciful, passionate and fabulous. In "Beginning of the Songs of Delight", Papyrus Harris 500 demonstrates fanciful love through "†¦apportioned to you is my heart,/ I do for you what it desires,/ when I am in your arms" (lines 1-3). In Shakespeare's "Othello", the Moor and Desdemona declare their love for one another, at the protest of her father and the disbelief of the councilmen (Act I, scene iii). Their romantic love was unrealistic because of their age difference, and fanciful because she was intrigued by the stories of heroism and daring that he imparted to her. Passionate love is, by definition, ruled by intense emotion and marked by intense feelings as is expressed in "My body thrives, my heart exults/ At our walking together;/ Hearing your voice is pomegranate wine,/ I live by hearing it./ Each look with which you look at me/Sustains me more than food and drink" (lines 24-29). Love such as this can sustain us through all the joys and challenges life has to offer if it is without condition. Unconditional love endures over time. "But love me for love's sake, that evermore/ thou mayst love on, through love's eternity" (Browning, 260), speaks of love that is grounded in love alone and will last all forever.