Message- outlines the lengths the speaker would go to prove her love and commitment to the subject. The poem implies how the power of love make even great sacrifices feel like blessings.

This poem echoes Tollet’s speculative and inquisitive character that yearns to escape her psychological and physical imprisonment (both in her body and her setting) and how she thinks beyond her time and gender.

Context

• 1694-1754

• Tollet was a learned woman raised in the Tower of London and partially tutored by Issac Newton

• An early feminist who never married

• Dedicated her life to her academics

• Extreme romantic

• Disabled - bad back

• Viewed herself as a psychological captive trapped by social norms

Form

• 1 stanza, 24 lines

• Iambic tetrameter (8 syllables peer line)

• Visual rhyme

• Rigid structure - could represent her rigid life in the tower and inner turmoil

• Listed form - makes the lengths she would go to seem never ending

Language - she uses very vast language which makes the reader feel a sense of dislocation.

• Some rhyming couplets used but not consistently ‘light’ ‘night’ / ‘bed’ ‘spread’

• As poem continues she uses increasingly hyperbolic language, which seeps out of the confinement of rhyme

• By the end of the poem the language becomes an outpouring of praise in a very ceremonial tone - she cannot contain herself, demonstrates the escalation of her feelings

• Small bits of enjambment communicate her excitement and passion

• Aspirant alliteration of ‘h’ sounds have a breathless effect and create a romantic tone

• Plenty of alliteration throughout of ‘m’ ‘w’ ‘f’ ‘h’ - these echo the repeatedly symbolic lengths she is prepared to go to

• The use of natural imagery that center on extremes to show the strength of the speaker’s love and emotion

Speaker - written in first person, Tollet is probably the speaker here. Particularly as many of the tasks undertaken by the speaker for her lover are typically domestic tasks undertaken by an 18th century woman.

Perhaps for Tollet, this shows the length of sacrifice she was willing to go to, being a strong feminist who disagreed with the social norms of the time, she was willing to become the very thing she despised to prove her love and stay close to her lover.

Setting - a fantasy winter world. Portrayed as being very harsh ‘eternal snow’ ‘solid ice confined’ ‘all is wild and all is waste’, this may reflect and emphasize the strength of her love.

Poem

Ask me no more, my truth to prove,
What I would suffer for my love.
With thee I would in exile go
To regions of eternal snow,
O'er floods by solid ice confined,
Through forest bare with northern wind:
While all around my eyes I cast,
Where all is wild and all is waste.
If there the tim rous stag you chase,
Or rouse to fight a fiercer race,
Undaunted I thy arms would bear,
And give thy hand the hunter's spear.
When the low sun withdraws his light,
And menaces an half-year's night,
The conscious moon and stars above
Shall guide me with my wand'ring love.
Beneath the mountain's hollow brow,
Or in its rocky cells below,
Thy rural feast I would provide.
Nor envy palaces their pride.
The softest moss should dress thy bed,
With savage spoils about thee spread:
While faithful love the watch should keep,
To banish danger from thy sleep.