Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1-8
He is stark mad, whoever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
I saw a flash of powder burn a day?
- Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do. Our speaker starts off by insulting folks. Specifically, he says that anyone who claims to have been in love for an hour is totally ("stark") insane ("mad").
- (By the way, we're just guessing that our speaker's a "he" at this point, since we just got rolling in this poem. Check out "Speaker" for more details.)
- The speaker goes on to explain himself a bit further. It's not that love can dissolve ("decays") in the space of an hour. It's actually much, much more powerful than that. In fact, it can totally consume ten people in less time ("less space") than an hour (4).
- The speaker uses figurative language to suggest that love can eat, or "devour," the poor people whom it afflicts.
- So far, then, we get the sense that love is an unstoppable force that will just eat us up—eek.
- The speaker wonders if anyone would believe him if he told them that he'd had the plague for a whole year. He doesn't answer this rhetorical question, but we can: nobody. The plague is something that would have killed you a whole lot less time than a year.
- The speaker also wants to know who wouldn't laugh at him if he said he saw a flash of (gun) powder that took a whole day to burn. That stuff usually goes up…well, in flash. It doesn't take a whole day.
- Here, we see the speaker using two metaphors to describe the quickness and power of love's effects. It's no slow-moving affair to be taken lightly. It consumes the person in love, and it does so in a serious hurry.
- Before we head off to the second stanza, we should point out that you should have noticed some end rhyme and a regular meter going on here. You didn't? Well, don't feel too bad. We fill you in on all those details over in "Form and Meter."