SINCE THERE”S NO HELP

In the poem “Since There’s No Help,” Michael Dayton displays the deep feelings that accompany the breaking-off of a relationship.  The speaker personifies the emotions in order to provide a deeper understanding of the post-breakup depression: “Now, at the last Gasp of Love’s latest breath,/ When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,/ When Faith is kneeling by his bead of death,/ And Innocence is closing up his eyes.”  Drayton’s personification of emotion allows the reader to understand the mental process that occurs at the end of a more physical sense of comprehension.  In addition to giving lifelike characteristics to his feelings, the speaker changes his tone from cautious, to sorrow, to hope.  “Be it not seen in either of our brows/ That we one jot of former love retain./… Faith is kneeling by his bed of death/… From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.”  The shifts from fear of residual emotion, to a mournful “death” of love, to hope for love to come again aids the speaker to share the depth and changes in how he responds to the end of the relationship.  Michael Drayton’s poem “since There’s No Help” uses personification and changes in tone to make his work an intense and empathetic analysis of post-breakup emotions.

Sonnet LXI: Since There's No Help

Michael Drayton

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part, 

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.