Summary Poem Analysis of 'Farewell, ungrateful traitor' by John Dryden
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Course
Poetry
Institution
CIE
Here’s a full analysis of the poem ‘Farewell, ungrateful traitor’ by John Dryden, tailored towards A-Level students but also suitable for those studying at a higher level.
Includes:
POEM
VOCABULARY
STORY / SUMMARY
SPEAKER / VOICE
LANGUAGE FEATURES
STRUCTURE / FORM
CONTEXT
ATTITUD...
Farewell, ungrateful traitor!
Farewell, my perjur'd swain!
Let never injur'd woman
Believe a man again.
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.
'Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain,
But when we love, you leave us
To rail at you in vain.
Before we have descried it,
There is no joy beside it,
But she that once has tried it
Will never love again.
The passion you pretended
Was only to obtain,
But once the charm is ended,
The charmer you disdain.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure
When living is a pain.
VOCABULARY
Farewell - goodbye
Ungrateful - someone who doesn’t express thanks or gratitude
Traitor - a betrayer
, Perjur’d - perjured, to lie (especially in a court of law)
Swain - a young lover or suitor, a youth
Injur’d - injured
Possessing - owning, having possession of
Rail - complain and protest
In vain - pointlessly, without success
Descried - discovered, seen, detected, noticed
Disdain - disrespect, lack or respect, dislike of something
STORY/SUMMARY
The speaker rejects her lover, saying goodbye to him - he is an ‘ungrateful traitor’. She
calls him a lying youth, saying that no injured woman should ever again listen to men.
The pleasure of having a love is too great to express in words, but it is such a short
blessing, and the unrequited love that comes after is long and painful. (Stanza 2) It is
easy to trick women into pitying a broken man, but when they love such a man he
leaves them and they can only complain helplessly. Before they have even fully
acknowledged the love, it loses its joy, and a woman that has experienced this kind of
broken love can never properly love again. (Stanza 3) He pretended to be in love, but
it was only to gain what he wanted; when the brief charming first feelings of this type
of love disappear, he hates the ‘charmer’ - the woman. Women measure their love by
this, their own type of love reflects and responds to this behaviour, and so they also
feel a loss of love at this point in the relationship. In the end, they conclude that it is
more pleasurable to die than to live in this state of torment over love.
SPEAKER/VOICE
The speaker of the poem takes on the role of a female tormented lover, one who
feels they have given affection and pity to men who were already troubled by love
from a previous experience, only to find that they in turn hurt and trouble the speaker
too. The conclusion of the poem is to suggest that a person who has experienced
difficulty in love will likely cause difficulty for others, and also that the male and
female perspectives on love differ, again causing strife and miscommunication.
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