Greater Love

Although love and violence are often conceived of as opposites in popular culture, the speaker in “Greater Love” creates a powerful link between them by exploring the uncomfortable ways in which they mirror one another. The speaker tends to focus upon the physical experiences of love and violence, as manifested in the human body. The speaker creates this mirroring effect through juxtaposing the physical attributes and experiences associated with a beloved lady in traditional love poetry with that of soldiers in war.

The clichés of traditional love poetry are alluded to in the “Red lips” (Line 1) of the poem’s opening line and the alluring “eyes” of a beloved (Line 5), as well as the “slender attitude” (Line 7) and “dear voice” (Line 15) that is “soft” (Line 13)—all common ways of describing the attractions of a female love interest in English poetry.

The speaker then contrasts these romantic clichés with the ugly realities of violent wartime deaths, which feature qualities that gruesomely realize what the clichés only describe in the abstract. What is even more “red” (Line 1) than imaginary lips are the horrific blood-stained stones (Line 2) marked by the wounded “English dead” (Line 2).