Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Song I

SONG I.

The challenge structure

Barbauld frames this as a competitive test—'come here and prove yourself.' This isn't advice; it's a dare. The speaker is positioning herself as the authority on love, not the victim of it.

COME here fond youth, whoe'er thou be,
That boasts to love as well as me;
And if thy breast have felt so wide a wound,
Come hither and thy flame approve;
I'll teach thee what it is to love,
And by what marks true passion may be found.
 It is to be all bath'd in tears;
To live upon a smile for years;
To lie whole ages at a beauty's feet:
 To kneel, to languish and implore;
And still tho' she disdain, adore:
It is to do all this, and think thy sufferings sweet.

Paradox of suffering

Notice the contradiction: true love requires you to 'think thy sufferings sweet.' This isn't romantic idealism—it's a clinical diagnosis of what love actually demands. Pleasure and pain collapse into one state.

 It is to gaze upon her eyes
With eager joy and fond surprise;
Yet temper'd with fuch chasle and awful fear

Fear and worship collapse

The comparison to 'wretches who wait their doom' reframes courtship as execution. Love requires the same helplessness as facing death. This is not flattering to either party.

As wretches feel who wait their doom;
Nor must one ruder thought presume
Tho' but in whispers breath'd, to meet her ear.
 It is to hope, tho' hope were lost;
Tho' heaven and earth thy passion crost;
Tho' she were bright as sainted queens above,
And thou the least and meanest swain
That folds his flock upon the plain,
Yet if thou dar'st not hope, thou dost not love.

Hope as necessity

Barbauld makes hope mandatory—without it, the feeling isn't love at all. This isn't about optimism; it's about the psychological requirement to sustain the condition, even against reason.

 It is to quench thy joy in tears;
To nurse strange doubts and groundless fears:

Jealousy as proof

The speaker argues jealousy is evidence of genuine love, not a flaw. Even if the beloved is 'fonder and more true,' you must experience groundless doubts. Love requires irrationality.

If pangs of jealousy thou hast not prov'd,
Tho' she were fonder and more true

Jealousy as proof

The speaker argues jealousy is evidence of genuine love, not a flaw. Even if the beloved is 'fonder and more true,' you must experience groundless doubts. Love requires irrationality.

Than any nymph old poets drew,
Oh never dream again that thou hast lov'd.
 If when the darling maid is gone,
Thou dost not seek to be alone,
Wrapt in a pleasing trance of tender woe,
And muse, and fold thy languid arms,
Feeding thy fancy on her charms,
Thou dost not love, for love is nouriush'd so.
 If any hopes thy bosom share
But those which love has planted there,
Or any cares but his thy breast enthrall,
 Thou never yet his power hast known;

Tyranny as definition

The final stanza reveals the thesis: love is 'despotic' rule. It must occupy the entire mind or it doesn't exist. This is totalizing, not redemptive.

Love sits on a despotic throne,
And reigns a tyrant, if he reigns at all.

Tyranny as definition

The final stanza reveals the thesis: love is 'despotic' rule. It must occupy the entire mind or it doesn't exist. This is totalizing, not redemptive.

 Now if thou art so lost a thing,
Here all thy tender sorrows bring,
And prove whose patience longest can endure:
We'll strive whose fancy shall be lost
In dreams of fondest passion most;
For if thou thus hast lov'd, oh! never hope a cure.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

A diagnostic poem, not a romantic one

Barbauld doesn't celebrate love here—she catalogs its symptoms like a physician. Each stanza adds another requirement: tears, sleeplessness, fear, jealousy, obsession. The speaker isn't encouraging this state; she's defining it with clinical precision. > 'It is to be all bath'd in tears; / To live upon a smile for years' — notice the repetition of 'it is.' She's building a checklist, not a lyric.

This becomes a test of endurance rather than feeling. The speaker challenges the young man to compete with her in suffering, suggesting that love is measurable by how much pain you can sustain. The final line—'if thou thus hast lov'd, oh! never hope a cure'—is devastating: love, once experienced this way, is permanent damage. There is no recovery, only the companionship of shared affliction.

Barbauld's irony: the speaker as victor

[CONTEXT: Barbauld wrote this in the 1770s during a period of literary debates about female desire and agency. Women poets were expected to be modest about passion.] The speaker positions herself as the authority on love through sheer experience. She's not asking the youth to teach her—she'll 'teach thee what it is to love.' This reversal of the typical courtship dynamic is crucial: she holds the knowledge and the power.

The poem's final stanza reveals the trap: > 'Now if thou art so lost a thing, / Here all thy tender sorrows bring, / And prove whose patience longest can endure.' She's not offering comfort; she's offering competition. Both parties will be trapped in 'dreams of fondest passion most.' By making love a mutual endurance contest rather than a romantic exchange, Barbauld exposes how the emotion traps everyone equally—youth and experienced lover, man and woman. The poem's dark wit lies in its refusal to distinguish between love and suffering.