I WOKE UP IN LOVE

Love is an incredibly vital piece of the human experience, and is impossible to live without. Since it is so vast, it can be difficult for one to describe, but through poetry, this task is made a little easier through metaphor, diction, and even how lines are spaced, when spoken, or written down. "Of Love: A Sonnet" and "Love Comes Quietly", by Robert Herrick and Robert Creeley respectively, can be related to one another through their tones and themes, and then also to the song "I Woke Up In Love This Morning" by the Partridge Family. There is a common chord of how suddenly one can fall in love with another person, and how hard it can be to be apart from that person.

Firstly, Robert Herrick's sonnet, "Of Love", details the feeling of finding oneself falling in love. He writes "How love came in I do not know, / Whether by the eye, or ear, or no", which brings up how all of a sudden he found himself feeling this way. This can happen in so many ways, not just meeting someone new. It occur when one steps back and realizes that maybe someone one is with very often is there for them in the way that the other is looking for, or perhaps when reconnecting with someone with which they once loved. The last two lines also depict the hurt of when one's interest leaves them. "That when from hence she does depart / The outlet then is from the heart". This could be in death, or maybe the end of their relationship, but that final line can serve as how heart wrenching it can be to have a significant other leave. The outlet mentioned is that piece of the heart that leaves once one is without that other person.

Next comes "Love Comes Quickly", by Robert Creeley. This short and sweet poem has two stanzas, each with its own shred of a different tone. The first reads, "Love comes quietly, / finally, drops / about me, on me, / in the old ways", which, similarly to Herrick's work, details how suddenly one can fall in love. The old ways Creeley refers to could be that he knows he has fallen in love before, and has fallen very similarly. Of course, love feels different and new every time, but after taking a step back, one can notice perhaps their own tells in the situation. The second stanza, however, takes a bit of a different turn. "What did I know / thinking myself / able to go / alone all the way". This part eludes to the solemn truth of how hard life can be all alone. Humans are social beings and need the love and support of others in order to properly function, and without this, people tend to go crazy. There is also such an enormous burden put on each person in life, and once we can find another person to share it with and trust with the situations, living becomes so much easier and more pleasurable.

Finally, the song that brings these two together is "I Woke Up In Love This Morning", by David Cassidy, who performed it with The Partridge Family. While it is a bit cheesy, being that it is from 1971, the words themselves are just as strong as any poem. The chorus, which is the same as the title, relates to the already described suddenness of falling in love in the aforementioned poems, as Cassidy sings about how he woke up and realized that he had fallen in love after falling asleep thinking about "you" may be. "Do dreams come true? / Well, if they do, / I'll have you not for just a night, / but for my whole life through". This quote, from the bridge, can be connected to the final stanza of Creeley's work, as Cassidy is detailing how he dreams he could be with that other person, probably due to the fact that life is so hard without them being together.

All together, the collection of tones can be described as a joyful expression of having found love, whether the other person is aware or not. There is such an excitement in falling in love, and each example given can definitely attest to that.