The Ramification of Love As a high school student, the complexities of love is no mystery. Love may leave a man in pieces and a woman in tears. If not taken care of properly, it can lead to borderline insanity. This outcome of love is the case of the speaker in the poem For That He Looked Not upon Her in which an ex-lover is writing his lover why he does not have the will to look his ex-lover in the eye. In this poem, George Gascoigne uses rhyme scheme, alliteration, and metaphors to shift from emotional desire to be with an ex-lover to a logical response of understanding that the relationship between the two would only make things worse to exhibit the complexity of unseen, mixed emotions that a party of the relationship might feel after a break-up. Like a sappy love letter, this poem has the form of an ABAB rhyme scheme that flows with a systematic approach in an often strictly emotional situation. Along with an iambic pentameter for the entirety of the poem, this poem has intricate patterns, revealing the nature of this well-thought-out love letter. This form emphasizes why the speaker cannot look at his ex-lover in the eye and increases the credibility of the speaker given his emotions. At the very end of the poem a rhyming couplet finishes by displaying that the speaker has both an illogical, emotional side that …show more content…
By describing his behavior as “louring head so low” (ln. 2) and “`ticed with the trustless bait” (ln. 6), the speaker exaggerates the magnitude in which he feels despair for his loss of lover. By using these alliterations to exaggerate his sentiment towards the relationship, the speaker presents what affections he has for his heartbreaker in great magnitude, revealing what might not be seen at surface, but what is hidden through bizarre