With reference to at least three Pre-twentieth century poets, discuss how they wrote about love

There is a vast range of love poems around today, each describing different kinds of love. In this essay I will attempt to discuss how four Pre-twentieth century poets wrote about love.

Robert Browning – ‘Porphyria’s Lover’
Love poems often express the wish that time would stand still, so that a particularly intense moment of love will last forever. The lover in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ feels this too, but his way of immortalising that moment is, to say the least, rather drastic.
‘Porphyria’s Lover’, like Browning’s other poem, ‘My Last Duchess’ is written in dramatic monologue. In a dramatic monologue, a single character speaks to a silent audience, revealing their personality, morality, thoughts and feelings. Both poems are a dramatic insight into the mind of an abnormally possessive lover. The repetition of the word ‘mine’ shows that the lover is very possessive and further backs up the claim that the lover is a ‘psychopath’.
Porphyriaâ€...