First Love by John Clare Poem Analysis

The Poem ‘First Love’ by John Clare was published in the year 1820 which is the same year he married his wife Martha Turner. John Clare’s poem ‘First Love’ was not influenced by his late wife Martha Tuner but was influenced by his first love Mary Joyce. It was written to express the emotions and nature he experienced and desired towards Mary. 

Throughout John’s Poem, he expresses the themes of romance and how one can be so lovestruck over their first love only to realize that sadness and heartbreak follow close behind. Clare has produced his poem in the 1st person to express his thoughts and feelings towards his first love directly to the reader from his point of view. “First Love” includes an ‘a b a b’ rhyme scheme throughout to create the rhythm of a heartbeat using a duh-duh to a de-Dum rhythm. By including rhyming words with this rhythm to represent a heartbeat gives the reader an idea of how he is reacting to experiencing love. Within stanza 1 of the poem, the mood and tone are more innocent and intriguing to show Clare’s curiosity towards his new experience with love. 

However, in the 2nd stanza, the mood is more set on Clare’s embarrassment towards his love only to turn into a tone of coldness and an uneasy mood in the third stanza. Language techniques that Clare used throughout his poem on love include personification and hyperboles. This can be seen in the line “My legs refused to walk away,”, which shows how the love towards Mary was so strong that his legs had just given up on him and refused to work. This exaggeration shows the reader the extent his first love had reached and how the love had so much power that he couldn’t move. 

Within the first stanza, a simile was used in the line “Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower” to compare his love to something as sweet and delicate as a beautiful flower. The language technique simile is used to compare his love to something as delicate as a flower to show how he thinks that the woman he first loves is just as simple and pure. The technique of imagery is used by Clare to describe and give the reader a visual of what first love is doing to him. “And then my blood rushed to my face”, this line helps the reader visualise that he is dazed and confused while falling in love. This is a sign of how embarrassed Clare feels for his passionate love towards his first love. 

The poem 'first love' by John Clare is written to let people envision what it is like to first fall in love with someone. Clare passes 3 stages throughout the poem; 1 a loss of innocence, 2 a passion for love that turns into embarrassment, and 3 isolation and sadness. Clare uses language techniques such as personification, hyperboles, similes, and imagery to tell the story of his first love and how it affected him.