For That He Looked Not upon Her' Poem Review

In renowned English poet George Gascoigne’s “For That He Looked Not Upon Her,” Gascoigne expresses his extremely complex attitude towards desire, as well as the regret and pain that follow it. Gascoigne uses literary devices such as diction, form, imagery, and metaphors to express these feelings. Here is “For That He Looked Not Upon Her” analysis paper to review the understanding of this literary work. The author utilizes the metaphor by making comparisons between desire and fly returning to a flame as well as a mouse returning to the trap.

First, the authors clever choice of diction shows the severity of his depression and sorrow. Gascoigne choice of words are somewhat contradictory which his words of joy and passion and words of extreme sorrow and misery. The speaker describes the object of his desire (or, in this case the object in the metaphor that represents it) with soft words, but describes his actual desire and feelings as “bale” (meaning ruinous). The word choice of the author almost makes the poem painful to read. He speaks of “deceit” and being “scorched” (as the fly was by the flame) by desire.

Next, the P.O.V. (point of view) of the poem is vital for understanding the personal feelings of the speaker. Though the point of view is first-person, meaning the speaker is the man telling you his story, he is merely telling his story through metaphors. This is important because he is expressing his personal feelings which can be see directly.

Now that the point of view is known, the metaphors can be interpreted correctly. The imagery in this poem is heavy. First is the image of a mouse, which is considered vermin; a mouse is small, insignificant and helpless. The mouse was drawn by desire into a trap which it was lucky enough to escape. Because of its deadly desire, the mouse returns to the trap despite its fear of further deceit. Next a fly is introduced: even smaller and more insignificant. The fly had been “scorched” by a flame that it was drawn to. Gascoigne compares himself to the fly because he has learned that grief always follows desire. He then makes an indirect comparison between the fire that scorched the fly and his past loved one’s “blazing eyes” that brought his misery.

To sum up, this poem tells of a man’s unwillingness to look into the eyes of his past loved one again (hence the title) for fear of further rejection, pain, or suffering. Because of a past experience that left him scarred, the speakers believes that he must refrain from returning to the object of his desire (the woman) and resist the urge to feed again on the bait that betrayed him. The speaker’s main point is that as a mouse returns to a trap or a fly returns to a flame, a man can sometimes too often return to that which brought his suffering.