Song (Love What Art Thou? A Vain Thought) Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

Song (Love What Art Thou? A Vain Thought) Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

Love

The entire poem is a really just a series of metaphors on a single motif; a motif that is presented in the opening line. (Though, technically, that is not the title of the poem, which is “Song.”) The speaker opens by asking what love is and though this recurring motif answers through a figurative language and symbol. Ultimately, the answer seems to suggest that love is itself merely a symbol of something.

A Flower

The third stanza presents one of the most direct symbols of this recurring motif through the common metaphorical association of love with flowers. The symbolism takes love from a flower that smells sweet to one which lost all its sweetness in the death of an hour.

A Fragile Thing

The fourth stanza confronts the motif by associating love fragility. The fragility of love is compared first to childish behavior and then to a more adult emotional response that is equally fragile: vanity. The metaphor is extended with a striking juxtaposition of bubbles made by rain being firm when, of course, the irony is that bubbles are every bit as fragile a child or a vain person.

Love as Law

The final stanza presents what may well be the most jolting addition to this motif of musing on the subject of what love is. Here the symbolism is situated within something far less fragile: the law. One thinks of the law being something one cannot break without punishment and so the symbolism is apt.

Fantasy

Vanity is not introduced in the fourth stanza; it kicks off the motif of comparison. Love becomes a metaphor in the first symbolic answer to the query posed at the start. What is love? “A vain thought” shaped in the mind as part of fantasy.

Update this section!

You can help us out by revising, improving and updating this section.

Update this section

After you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. An editor will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback.

Cite this page