Poetry · Chapter
The Passionate Pilgrim explained
A collection of poems exploring themes of love, desire, beauty, and mortality, including the courtship of Venus and Adonis, the fickleness of love, the contrast between youth and age, and the transient nature of beauty.
What happens
A collection of poems exploring themes of love, desire, beauty, and mortality, including the courtship of Venus and Adonis, the fickleness of love, the contrast between youth and age, and the transient nature of beauty.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Desire
Central theme across poems, depicting Venus's pursuit of Adonis, the speaker's complex loves, and the fickleness of affection.
Beauty and Transience
Explicitly addressed in poem XIII, comparing beauty to a fading gloss, a dying flower, and brittle glass.
Truth and Deception
Explored in the opening poem where the speaker knowingly accepts his lover's lies, and in the theme of false oaths.
Characters to notice
- Venus
Appears as Cytherea, the queen of love, wooing Adonis in several poems.
- Adonis
The young, reluctant object of Venus's affections, who flees her advances.
- Philomela
Mentioned as Philomela, whose song is contrasted with the lark.
- Jove
Referenced as Jove in comparisons of divine power and beauty.
- Fortune
Addressed as 'frowning Fortune' in a lament about inconstancy.
- Death
Personified as causing untimely death, as in 'kill'd too soon by death's sharp sting.'
Key passages
“When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies”
When my beloved claims to be faithful, I pretend to believe her even though I know she is deceiving me.
Opening lines of the first poem, establishing the theme of willful self-deception in love.
“Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly; A flower that dies when first it gins to bud; A brittle glass that's broken presently”
Beauty is a fleeting and unreliable quality, like a shine that fades, a flower that dies as it blooms, or glass that shatters instantly.
From poem XIII, a meditation on the ephemeral nature of beauty.
“Crabbed age and youth cannot live together: Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care”
Old age and youth are incompatible: youth is joyful, while age is burdened with worries.
From poem XII, contrasting the vitality of youth with the weariness of age.