Ring Out Your Bells Essay Questions

What does the speaker think about love's existence?

At the beginning of the poem, the speaker states that all love is dead; no one will ever be able to reverse this death, so people should begin to mourn. However, as the poem goes on, the speaker admits that love is not in fact dead, but only hibernating. He thus acknowledges that while the loss of love can feel like death, the potential for love always exists. He cannot find his loving feelings, or his mistress', but one day, it is likely that love will awaken from its sleep in both their hearts.

Why does the speaker say that all love is "infected"?

The speaker feels that all love is infected because his mistress has left him. He personifies Love as a person, and argues that Love has died from a disease. The particular disease is primarily "disdain"—the speaker's mistress' lack of interest or admiration for him. We could say that this leaves the speaker "lovesick" with no possibility of a cure. When his mistress' love seems to spoil, the speaker exaggerates, extrapolating wildly from the fact that her love for him has weakened to the thought that all love will henceforth be diseased and dead.

How does the meaning of the poem's refrain change over the course of the poem?

The first time the speaker calls out to the Lord to deliver "us" from "female franzy" and "ungrateful fancy," he seems to include only men in his "us," and to argue unequivocally that love is dead as a result of women's unfaithfulness. As the poem progresses, however, the speaker comes to complicate his own message and in the process reveal his unreliability. In the second stanza, the speaker begins to cast doubt on the idea that love is ever pure and holy to begin with, noting that, dead, love begins to reveal its hypocrisy and tendency to blame others. In the third stanza, he reveals that he is complaining because his mistress has left him: he has made grand proclamations about the state of love in general based on his own personal experience. By the final stanza, he has admitted that love not, in fact, dead at all. The final refrains differs from the other four, making it clear that Love itself has forced him to castigate his mistress. Love has driven him to be just as erratic as he has accused his mistress of being. Read in this light, the speaker admits that love drives everyone to madness and frustration, men and women alike.