The speaker of the poem “Love What Art Thou?” poses several rhetorical questions about the nature of love (personally addressed in the poem) and proceeds to characterized love in both positive and negative ways. Each stanza deals with a different aspect of love.
In the first stanza, the speaker harshly judges the vanity that is an integral part of love, when “many fools” (l. 5) believe out of vanity that someone would love them, only to be entrapped by the feeling of love. In the second and third stanza the speaker slightly changes their tune. While they still emphasize that love will eventually turn bad, they compare the initial feeling of love to a fresh morning as well as a beautiful flower.
In the forth stanza, the speaker reverts to their attitude of the first stanza, claiming that love is simply “childish” (l. 16) and “vain” (l. 16). In the last stanza, the speaker concludes the poem by stating that they would like to continue to say far worse things about love, but since they have been in love before as well, they will refrain from this.
