Lovers Song Of The Timelessness Of Love And The Grim Reaper

In this poem, the speaker observes a lover sing of the timelessness of love and the clocks unified remark on how love and life is temporary. The speaker demonstrates a woeful tone throughout the poem while the lover’s optimistic and somewhat naive tone is put to shame by the clocks cynicism. The speaker uses diction, metaphors, personification, and hyperbole to ultimately get his point across that everything ends and we must cherish the temporary rather than deceiving ourselves with eternal love. In the speaker’s first stanza, he or she’s use diction such as describing the river as “brimming” (5) and the crowds as “fields of harvest wheat” (4) alluding to the eventual death of the people in this crowd since wheat is harvested with a scythe and the Grim Reaper, a symbol of death, also uses a scythe to “harvest” his victims. This portrays the speaker’s woeful tone is combatted however with the arrival of a lover singing to his or her sweetheart presenting a second speaker in the poem so far.
This presents a contrasting tone of optimism to that of the first speaker’s cheerless