Song ("Love Armed") Essay Questions

In what ways does the poem innovate within the Petrarchan tradition?

While "Love Armed" can be considered a conventional early modern English love poem, Behn includes subtle changes to the Petrarchan tradition that dominated the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. One of these changes derives simply from the fact that she writes from a female perspective; traditionally, Petrarchan love poems featured a male speaker lamenting unrequited love by a female beloved. This female perspective also invites other innovations, including the imagined re-coupling of the speaker and her beloved and the rewriting of Cupid as a cruel and ruthless demi-god.

How does the rhyme scheme inform the poem's primary thematic focus?

"Love Armed" is composed of two eight-line stanzas written in iambic tetrameter. The rhyme scheme alternates with every other line, or ABABCDCDEFEFGHGH. This rhyme scheme reinforces the speaker's imagined notion of re-coupling herself and her beloved, as each variation ultimately returns to a rhyme and predictable rhythm.

What is the speaker's relationship to Cupid in the poem?

The speaker at first identifies herself as one of the "Bleeding Hearts" that Cupid has wounded, suggesting that her unrequited love has made her a victim of the god of desire (2). However, in the second stanza, the speaker also becomes a surrogate mother figure of Cupid, identifying herself with Venus while identifying her beloved with Mars, the god of war.