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  • hamsa
    Oct 12 3:13 PM 2006
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    please help me to explain this poem and to comment it critically

  • I-Like-Rhymes
    October 12, 2006
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    Perhaps, as the previous commentors have said this is about love. I think it describes how, as the poet has grown older and, perhaps wiser, (Senec & Plato) he has forsaken the mad, impetuous foolishness of his youth.
    He leaves the pursuit of passionate love to younger folk with less important things to do (idle youth) as his experiences tell him that such love causes him pain and problems.
    That is one interpretation, you might percieve another. How you analyse and comment, critique, upon it is up to you.

  • enthralledforever
    October 23, 2006
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    With idle youth go use thy property

    What does property mean here?

    And scape forth, since liberty is lever.

    "lever"?

    • Old Poetry
      October 23, 2006
      Reply
      With idle youth go use thy property.
      In England (where this was written) Women were property at the time this was written (and in law were property until the nineteenth century ! !)

      And scape forth, since liberty is lever.
      It has been argued that this means desirable.
      I think it is a more normal meaning of something that gives one an advantage and liberty gives an advantage, escaping from the chains of passionate love.
      Is this a poor old man glad, in his old age, to be leaving the madness of passion to younger men.
      Only a thought !
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