Love Without Hope
Summary
There are the Squire’s daughter and a young bird-catcher. He takes off his hat and that has the meaning of refusing his own love for the girl. Then there is an exhortation to let free the lark, maybe imprisoned by the young man.
Discussion
Form and meter
One sentence divided up into two couple of lines with scheme rhyme AABB.
Characters
The girl is presentend not directly, but with a degree of kinship, while the young man is presentend through an activity, bird-catching. Both are social characterizations, but each one carries a different sense. The one of the man could suggest a social position, the one of the girl suggests the power of her father and family above her.
The lark is the central figure of the poem: which relationships exist among the lark, the bird-catcher, the Squire's daughter and love?
Interpretation
As the title can suggest clearly, the main theme of this poem is the love not correspond. There is a parallel between the gesture of throwing the hat and the release of the lark.
To throw an hat could have the meaning of getting a new decision in life, closing an old situation. Maybe this could be the metaphor for expressing the end of a love story between the young man and the Squire's daughter. As a matter of fact, as the young man sweep off his hat, he lets free the lark.
The lark maybe is the personification of the girl, so the young man lets free the girl from his love.
Otherwise the meaning of lark can be the one of 'joke', so the sentence meaning is 'rid the joke'. In this way the young man rids himself of the girl and of one love that is not correspond, that is a joke.
Also the lark