THE THEME OF LOVE
The scene as it comes across in the poem is that of a lover in distress due to his beloved lady not being with him. This is an archetypal scene in love poems in the style of the Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374). Typically, the lover is male, and pining. The lady is beautiful but unreachable. There are all kinds of philosophical and metaphysical dimensions to the genre (the lady epitomizes Ideal Beauty), but they do not play a part in Geswinde grijsart. Look in the >Bibliography for the book by Leonard Forster on the Petrarchan convention.The genre aspect extends to the poem's structure: the speaker expresseshis love and his pining by means of elaborate images and metaphors, and by manipulating the standard sonnet form.
Here the poem's long opening section highlighting different aspects of time (lines 1-8) is part of this elaboration, as is the witticism in the final lines. The point of the evocation of Time lies in the unexpected way the speaker contrasts the 'normal' experience of time with his own. Hence the relevance of the structural parallels between parts 1 and 2.
The volta or turning point in the poem usually falls between lines 8 and 9. Here it is anticipated in the sudden question 'hoe valdij mij soo traech' in line 8 - earlier than expected. This half-line forms the poem's hinge: in the lines before it the speaker addresses the god of time, in the lines following it he speaks to his beloved.
>Back to structure of poem (1)
>Back to structure of poem (2)
