Form and Content
The poem consists of forty-seven seven-line stanzas written in the rhyme royal (with the rhyme scheme ababbcc), a metre and structure identical to that of Shakespeare's poem The Rape of Lucrece. In the poem, the speaker sees a young woman weeping at the edge of a river, into which she throws torn-up letters, rings, and other tokens of love. An old man asks the reason for her sorrow, and she responds by telling him of a former lover who pursued, seduced, and finally abandoned her. She concludes her story by conceding that she would fall for the young man's false charms again:
- O that infected moisture of his eye,
- O that false fire which in his cheek so glow'd,
- O that forc'd thunder from his heart did fly,
- O that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow'd,
- O all that borrowed motion seemingly ow'd,
- Would yet again betray the fore-betray'd,
- And new pervert a reconciled maid!
Read more about this topic: A Lover's Complaint
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