An Explication of "Florence Vane"
Cooke demonstrates the speaker’s complex handling of grief and love with his word choices in each stanza. Words such as “pain,” “derision,” “disdain,” and “weep” express the painful, melancholic aspects of his love as they represent both the speaker’s own pain and his unrequited feelings for the girl that he loved. Cooke is intentional with these words so that the audience can acknowledge the lack of feelings that the girl had for this speaker. It’s obvious that we are not reading about a perfect couple as these two undeniably had a complicated relationship. On the other hand, there’s no denying the speaker’s intense love for this girl given Cooke’s word choices such as “dearly,” “fond,” “lovelier,” and “bloom.” These words all display a sweet passion that the speaker had for the girl that he has now lost. The poem combines sadness and adoration through the word choice to create a clear image of the speaker’s emotions as he deals with the girl’s death. The speaker keeps a steady focus on both his emotions and the girl as the poem follows his feelings of love and loss.
The poem starts out by introducing the title character, “Florence Vane,” and the speaker’s feelings for her as he states that he “loved thee long, and dearly.” This first line introduces the poem’s dynamic nature, using past tense and word choices that work together to establish the romantic yet melancholic tone. The first four lines of the poem also highlight the themes at play with the repeated use of “L” sounds within the words. The words “loved,” “long,” “dearly,” “life’s,” and “early” have an obvious use of the consonant because of its sound. Cooke may have purposefully included the letter in connection with the poem’s two themes of love and loss, both of which begin with the letter “L.” These four lines also use slant rhymes despite much of the poem using true rhymes. The use of slant rhymes at the start in comparison with the rest of the poem displays an almost impromptu introduction to the speaker’s feelings. These lines come off as impulsive, with the speaker merely saying what he feels rather than thinking through his words. This suggests that he couldn’t take the time to think about which words rhymed well because his love was so deep, he needed to share it. This explains why the next four lines, which delve into the pain he feels, introduce the use of true rhyme as he begins to think intently about what’s happened. This is shown in the fifth line, “I renew, in my fond vision,” where it’s evident that he’s begun to think about the past and his feelings. The first stanza ends with him focusing on his “pain” as his reason for sadness is expanded because of her “derision.”
The second stanza continues using true rhyme while the speaker reflects on the past and his memories of “Florence Vane.” These lines contain vivid nature imagery, with the speaker thinking back on the “lone and hoary” ruin where he met with the girl. It’s clear that this spot was almost sacred to the speaker as he uses the words “elysian” and “treasure.” This stanza shows how the speaker has begun to focus on the memories he has of Florence as these visions play out in his head. Like the first stanza, the second set of lines ends with the speaker saying “Florence Vane” which will continue to be repeated throughout the rest of the poem. This repeating of her name seems to signify that he is reciting this poem to the girl specifically.
The third stanza begins the speaker’s fond description of the girl through comparisons to nature and poetry. These descriptions are written in the past tense again which further highlights that something has happened to the girl. It’s clear from these descriptions that the speaker has come to idealize her, as he describes her as “lovelier than the roses,” and her heart as “a river / Without a main.” With nature imagery being common in Cooke’s writing, it feels as though these comparisons to nature are his way of displaying the speaker’s true, heartfelt feelings. The “L” sound is also quite present throughout this stanza in words such as “lovelier,” “excelled,” and “loved.” These word choices perfectly embody the themes of love and loss that the “L” sound represents in the poem as they are endearing words made sorrowful because of the speaker’s use of past tense. This stanza contains the last two lines in the poem that use slant rhyme. Cooke attempts to rhyme “river” and “never” in the fifth and seventh lines. One can say that the use of slant rhyme here has a similar significance as in the first stanza where the speaker is beginning to share his instinctual feelings. This seems to be what happens in the seventh line when he says, “Would I had loved thee never,” which could signify the speaker focusing now on his feelings rather than his memory. This connects with the speaker’s recurring switch between both his feelings and his memory, and between love and loss.
The nature imagery continues in the fourth stanza as the speaker reflects on his memory of a specific day he spent with the girl. He begins by calling her “fairest, coldest wonder,” which seemingly emphasizes both her beauty and her cold nature. This coldness that he notices in her indicates the unrequited nature of his love for her as she seems to not feel the same. Their unrequited relationship is further shown in the sixth and seventh lines of this stanza when he writes, “Thy disdain, / To quicken love’s pale ember,” where he seems to be sharing that this memory is the day she rejected him after he attempted to advance their romantic relationship. The true rhyme used throughout this stanza also shows that he’s lost in his memory of this day that was once “glorious.” With this being the second-to-last stanza, it’s clear that Cooke is now starting to create the bigger picture of what happened with “Florence Vane.”
The last stanza switches the speaker’s focus to the girl’s death. This stanza utilizes the poem’s consistent “L” sound with the first line, “The lilies of the valley.” Cooke uses this line to emphasize the love and loss that the poem deals with as the flowers, which have related to his love for her, are now weeping because of her death. He repeats this connection between flowers and death in the next two lines, “And the daisies love to dally / Where maiden’s sleep.” Once again, Cooke utilizes the “L” sound while emphasizing the themes of love and loss by focusing on the flowers near Florence’s grave. This stanza shows the speaker’s deep love for the girl as he’s now solely focused on the girl and her death rather than his feelings or his memories. Cooke expresses the speaker’s passion through the imagery of nature that is present throughout the stanza. This use of nature is his way of expressing the speaker’s true feelings for the girl as he focuses on the flowers and words like “bloom” and “earthly” to convey his lasting emotions. The speaker has come to terms with the love and grief he feels, and he now wishes for her to be at peace among nature.
The poem’s meter is one element outside of its language that plays a crucial role in expressing the speaker’s sentiments. For the most part, the meter switches between longer iambic trimeter lines and shorter trochaic dimeter lines with this repeating until the last stanza; however, there are certain trochaic dimeter lines that have a catalexis at the end. This unique meter appears during each of the “Florence Vane” lines as well as in the fourth and fifth stanzas in the “Thy disdain” and “Never wane” lines. Cooke switches the meter to intentionally alter the poem’s rhyme in a way that’s noticeable. He clearly seems to be signifying something important about the speaker’s emotions and perspective especially because the “Florence Vane” lines are a part of this change in meter. The speaker spends the poem struggling with his feelings of love and loss as he thinks about Florence Vane, so it would make sense that Cooke is trying to convey the hurt that comes from even speaking her name. He ends each stanza with the speaker repeating the name as it becomes clear how deep his feelings were for her. As with Cooke’s use of slant rhyme, he uses the speaker’s utterance of her name as a moment to alter the meter and show how deeply affected the speaker is by this loss. These are the moments where the speaker’s emotions have overcome him through more than just his language as he changes the rhyme. This is apparent in the other two lines that have a catalectic foot as Cooke is using the change in meter to signify these overwhelming emotions. Both lines appear in the last two stanzas in the trochaic dimeter lines before the “Florence Vane” endings of each stanza. Their almost stunted, unique rhymes are significant because they aren’t repeating the girl’s name like before. Because they’re in the last two stanzas, they display the speaker’s emotions taking over in a way that causes him to end the poem. These two moments, along with the repeating of Florence Vane, are hurting him more as he approaches the last stanza where he’s focusing on her death rather than her. This focus connects to the altered rhyme because it’s these details about the death that are affecting him more than the other stanzas might have. He uses the ending to force himself to reflect on Florence despite the pain he feels as the lines ending with a catalexis show the struggle he’s having to address her death.
Aside from the poem’s meter, Cooke also utilizes the unique switch between feminine and masculine rhyme throughout the poem to signify something greater about the dynamic between the speaker and Florence. This switch is consistent and could easily display the balanced focus between this man and the girl he loved; however, I think it says something deeper about the speaker. The poem consists of moments where the speaker alternates between delving into who Florence was through her appearance and his memories of her, and moments where he focuses specifically on his feelings. Because of this pattern, Cooke’s choice to alternate between feminine and masculine rhyme seems to represent the speaker’s constant change in focus from Florence to himself as he battles his memory of her and his emotions that overcome him. This connects with how much of the poem is experienced through the speaker’s feelings as they often bleed into the moments where he tries to only focus on Florence. Cooke includes both feminine and masculine rhymes to portray this struggle to the audience through more than just language as the rhyme captures the speaker’s emotional battle between love and loss.