by Poe · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
A lyric addressed to a bride on her wedding day, whose blush kindles a fiercer flame of unrequited love and jealous loss in the speaker.
Connections
Topoi: Unattainable Beloved Archetypes: Lover Motifs: Marriage, Love, Fire, Eyes and Sight, White and Red Themes & Concepts: Unrequited Frustrated Love, Jealousy, Romantic Love, Grief and Loss Forms & Genres: Lyric, Comic Verse Song
Testo integrale / Full text
I saw thee on thy bridal day—
When a burning blush came o’er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee:
And in thine eye a kindling light
(Whatever it might be)
Was all on Earth my aching sight
Of Loveliness could see.
That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame—
As such it well may pass—
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
In the breast of him, alas!
Who saw thee on that bridal day,
When that deep blush would come o’er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee.
1827.