Love and Friendship by Emily Bronte

Love and Friendship

Love is like the wild rose-briar,

Friendship like the holly-tree—

The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms

But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,

Its summer blossoms scent the air;

Yet wait till winter comes again

And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now

And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,

That when December blights thy brow

He still may leave thy garland green.

Emily Bronte

Analysis:

    Love and friendship are both essential, as they affect human beings in every stage of life and also play with human emotion, while both concepts seem to be ignored at times. In the first stanza, she suggests that love and friendship often don’t agree with each other, and it seems as though one will conquer over the other at some point. The middle section of the poem continues using similes and metaphors connecting friendship with holly, and love with the rose. The final stanza concludes that friendship will win the battle, and be long lasting over love.  This poem is divided into three stanzas, each a quatrain. Bronte deliberately mixes the meter from line to line for dramatic effect, in order to highlight certain words to reinforce the image she creates. Also, the number of syllables in each line varies, except for the last stanza, where all the lines have a count of 8. Bronte uses many literary terms throughout the poem. The whole poem, in fact, is an extended metaphor in which love is being depicted as a sweet rose-briar and friendship a holly branch. By illustrating the two concepts in this fashion, Bronte is able to effectively suggest to the reader her thoughts on their coherence. The metaphor allows the reader to paint a picture in their minds and apply it to the general motif of love and friendship. Bronte also uses two alliterations in the second stanza:" sweet in spring" and "summer blossoms scent" to make the picture clearer and more detailed, because the alliterations help with the flow of the words. Bronte also used a personification at the last stanza- December. December cannot leave a garland green, but in Bronte’s case, it can, because it was used to show the holly’s endurance and strength.