Since there's no help - Michael Drayton

Thesis: In this poem by Michael Drayton, there is an immediate tone shift from a much disavowed tone to a more pleading one that offers a glimpse of hope.

In this sonnet styled poem, the persona, who is unidentified, but easily inferred as a married man, expresses interest in ending his marriage with his love. In fact, the very first line of the poem expresses this idea: “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part” (1). The tone continues to distance the man from the woman, and the man even goes on to claim that this makes him happier: “And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart” (3). After these lines, it is difficult to predict a shift in tone, yet it occurs after the eighth lines. Instead of continuously renouncing his marriage, the man goes on to personify love, passion, faith, and innocence in an effort to disclaim the woman’s power over repairing their love. The final lines of the poem go on to say, “now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, / from death to life thou mightst him yet recover” (13-14). The poem concludes with the man raising the idea that it is necessary for their love and marriage to expire for them to start anew. This shift in tone displays a sense of hope. Observing simply the tone of this poem is interesting enough. It resembles the workings of love that seem to be diminishing, yet there is also a way to fix it. The ending tone reaffirms the positive meaning behind the first eight lines, where it is inevitable that they “kiss and part” for them to ultimately save and cherish whatever they had between them that is so very special.