The Full Text of “A Song of Faith Forsworn”
1Take back your suit.
2It came when I was weary and distraught
3With hunger. Could I guess the fruit you brought?
4I ate in mere desire of any food,
5Nibbled its edge, and nowhere found it good.
6Take back your suit.
7Take back your love.
8It is a bird poach’d from my neighbor’s wood:
9Its wings are wet with tears, its beak with blood.
10'Tis a strange fowl with feathers like a crow:
11Death's raven, it may be, for all we know.
12Take back your love.
13Take back your gifts.
14False is the hand that gave them; and the mind
15That plann’d them, as a hawk spread in the wind
16To poise and snatch the trembling mouse below,
17To ruin where it dares—and then to go.
18Take back your gifts.
19Take back your vows.
20Elsewhere you trimm’d and taught these lamps to burn;
21You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn.
22You lit those candles in another shrine,
23Gutter’d and cold you offer them on mine.
24Take back your vows.
25Take back your words.
26What is your love? Leaves on a woodland plain,
27Where some are running and where some remain.
28What is your faith? Straws on a mountain height,
29Dancing like demons on Walpurgis night.
30Take back your words.
31Take back your lies.
32Have them again: they wore a rainbow face,
33Hollow with sin and leprous with disgrace:
34Their tongue was like a mellow turret bell
35To toll hearts burning into wide-lipp’d hell.
36Take back your lies.
37Take back your kiss.
38Shall I be meek, and lend my lips again
39To let this adder daub them with his stain?
40Shall I turn cheek to answer, when I hate?
41You kiss like Judas in the garden gate!
42Take back your kiss.
43Take back delight,
44A paper boat launch’d on a heaving pool
45To please a child, and folded by a fool;
46The wild elms roar’d: it sail’d—a yard or more.
47Out went our ship, but never came to shore.
48Take back delight.
49Take back your wreath.
50Has it done service on a fairer brow?
51Fresh, was it folded round her bosom snow?
52Her cast-off weed my breast will never wear:
53Your word is "love me." My reply, "despair!"
54Take back your wreath.
The Full Text of “A Song of Faith Forsworn”
1Take back your suit.
2It came when I was weary and distraught
3With hunger. Could I guess the fruit you brought?
4I ate in mere desire of any food,
5Nibbled its edge, and nowhere found it good.
6Take back your suit.
7Take back your love.
8It is a bird poach’d from my neighbor’s wood:
9Its wings are wet with tears, its beak with blood.
10'Tis a strange fowl with feathers like a crow:
11Death's raven, it may be, for all we know.
12Take back your love.
13Take back your gifts.
14False is the hand that gave them; and the mind
15That plann’d them, as a hawk spread in the wind
16To poise and snatch the trembling mouse below,
17To ruin where it dares—and then to go.
18Take back your gifts.
19Take back your vows.
20Elsewhere you trimm’d and taught these lamps to burn;
21You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn.
22You lit those candles in another shrine,
23Gutter’d and cold you offer them on mine.
24Take back your vows.
25Take back your words.
26What is your love? Leaves on a woodland plain,
27Where some are running and where some remain.
28What is your faith? Straws on a mountain height,
29Dancing like demons on Walpurgis night.
30Take back your words.
31Take back your lies.
32Have them again: they wore a rainbow face,
33Hollow with sin and leprous with disgrace:
34Their tongue was like a mellow turret bell
35To toll hearts burning into wide-lipp’d hell.
36Take back your lies.
37Take back your kiss.
38Shall I be meek, and lend my lips again
39To let this adder daub them with his stain?
40Shall I turn cheek to answer, when I hate?
41You kiss like Judas in the garden gate!
42Take back your kiss.
43Take back delight,
44A paper boat launch’d on a heaving pool
45To please a child, and folded by a fool;
46The wild elms roar’d: it sail’d—a yard or more.
47Out went our ship, but never came to shore.
48Take back delight.
49Take back your wreath.
50Has it done service on a fairer brow?
51Fresh, was it folded round her bosom snow?
52Her cast-off weed my breast will never wear:
53Your word is "love me." My reply, "despair!"
54Take back your wreath.
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“A Song of Faith Forsworn” Introduction
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A dramatic monologue from the late Victorian era, "A Song of Faith Forsworn" addresses a dishonest lover with righteous fury. Its speaker is a woman who believes her male partner (a suitor or husband) has cheated on her—or, at least, settled for her after a more passionate romance with someone else. Feeling betrayed, she tells him off and rejects his attempts to win her back. Her condemnation takes on vivid religious overtones, as she effectively damns her two-timing lover to hell. "A Song of Faith Forsworn" was collected in Lord De Tabley's Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical in 1893.
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“A Song of Faith Forsworn” Summary
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Take back the courtship you offered me. You offered it when I was tired and distressed by my hunger for love. How could I know what kind of "fruit," or love, you were bringing me? I accepted it only because I was starving for any love at all. I took just a brief taste and found it completely awful. Take back the courtship you offered me.
Take back the love you gave me. It belongs to someone else, like a bird you hunted on a neighbor's land. It's full of suffering, as if its wings and beak were streaked with tears and blood. It's like a peculiar bird with feathers black as a crow's—for all we know, it might represent death, like a raven. Take back the love you gave me.
Take back the gifts you gave me. The person who chose and gave them was as treacherous as a hawk preparing to swoop and snatch a mouse—to attack its prey when it can, then leave. Take back the gifts you gave me.
Take back the vows you swore to me. The romantic fire you've brought me—like a worshiper bringing lamps to a goddess's altar—has some other source, and it's almost burned out by now. You felt that fire for someone else, and now you're just offering me the cold remains of your passion. Take back the vows you swore to me.
Take back the loving words you said to me. Your love is as temporary as leaves in a country field, where some leaves are blowing away and only some are left behind. Your fidelity is as worthless as bits of tinder in the mountains, swirling like demons in a ritual bonfire lit to ward off evil spirits. Take back the loving words you said to me.
Take back the lies you told me. Keep them: their beauty was a false front. They were sinfully empty and shamefully ugly. The tongue that told them was like a bell solemnly ringing in a tower, announcing the entry of damned souls into the mouth of hell. Take back the lies you told me.
Take back the kiss you gave me. Am I supposed to meekly let you stain my lips again, you snake? Am I supposed to piously "turn the other cheek" to you, when I hate you? Your kiss is like the one that Judas betrayed Jesus with! Take back the kiss you gave me.
Take back the happiness you shared with me. It was fragile as a paper boat made by a fool and placed on a turbulent pond to amuse a child. As the wind roared through the elm trees, the boat sailed only a yard or so. It went out but never came back (it's wrecked). Take back the happiness you shared with me.
Take back the wreath of flowers you gave me. Did you give it to a more beautiful woman first, to wear as a crown? Did she wear it on her pale breast when it was fresh? I'll never wear the weeds she threw away. You keep saying "Love me," and my answer is, "Despair!" Take back the wreath of flowers you gave me.
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“A Song of Faith Forsworn” Themes
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Seduction and Betrayal
“A Song of Faith Forsworn” is a monologue delivered by a woman to an unfaithful lover: a man whose “faith” (fidelity) is “forsworn” (false). Outraged, she breaks up with him, telling him to take back everything he’s given her. In a string of harsh comparisons, she links his treachery with sin, sickness, disgrace, and death. Through her powerful moral judgments, the poem illustrates the pain and righteous anger that romantic betrayal can cause, while implying that such betrayal reveals just how false such a romance was in the first place.
At first, the speaker depicts herself as her lover’s defenseless victim. She says that she accepted his advances only because she was “distraught / with hunger” for love. (In other words, he took advantage of her loneliness and desperation.) She compares their love to a bird streaked with tears and blood: an image that conveys her own vulnerability and suffering. She also compares him to a “hawk” preying on a “mouse,” implying that he’s a predatory womanizer rather than the devoted suitor he claimed to be. Overall, she views herself as deceived and abused, and her demands that he “Take back” his false gifts express wounded frustration.
But as the speaker keeps rejecting him, her righteous fury starts to sound like divine wrath. She condemns her lover's cruelty and exposes his hypocrisy. She accuses him of bringing her “candles from another shrine,” implying that he’s spent his real passions on other women—but also subtly comparing herself to a goddess. From there, her language takes a religious turn; she compares his worthless “faith” to tinder whirling “like demons” in a bonfire and accuses him of “sin” and “disgrace.” Her accusations become downright biblical when she compares him to an “adder” (like the serpent in Eden) and “Judas” (whose kiss betrayed Jesus). This last comparison casts her as a martyr, but also as a god!
Her final reproaches illustrate their shared unhappiness, while also suggesting that she’s gained the upper hand over the man who’s betrayed her. Using an image that’s more sad than angry, she compares their “delight” to a doomed paper boat. In other words, he’s made them both miserable. But the closing lines imply that he’s desperately trying to win her back and getting rejected, because the speaker sees through his lies. The poem ends with one last command, driving home the way commands have shaped the speaker’s whole monologue. She’s not helpless; she’s telling him what to do—and telling him off.
The poem doesn’t portray the speaker’s rejection of her lover as a triumph; it realistically shows how much this bad romance has cost her. It’s also the product of an age when women typically had far less power than men in romantic situations. Still, by the end, the power dynamic seems to have flipped in her favor. Like an angry deity, she condemns her lover to suffer for his lack of “faith.”
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Song of Faith Forsworn”
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Lines 1-6
Take back your suit.
It came when I was weary and distraught
With hunger. Could I guess the fruit you brought?
I ate in mere desire of any food,
Nibbled its edge, and nowhere found it good.
Take back your suit.The poem is a dramatic monologue, meaning it's written in the voice of a character who's not the poet. In this case, the speaker is a woman whose male partner—a suitor or husband—has been unfaithful to her. ("A Song of Faith Forsworn" means, roughly, "A Song of Falsely Promised Fidelity.")
The exact nature of their relationship, and his betrayal, is somewhat unclear. Has she learned of his infidelity before marriage or after? Has he been sexually unfaithful, emotionally unfaithful, or both? Whatever the exact situation, there's no evidence in the poem to suggest that she's wrong about her partner. The poem is framed as a righteous reproach, in which she tells him to "Take back" everything he gave her, then rejects him for good.
In this first stanza, she specifically commands him to "Take back [his] suit." Here, "suit" means a formal appeal to begin courting a woman—a standard part of the courtship process in the Victorian era, when this poem was written. (Typically, a "suitor" made the appeal to the woman's father.) The speaker explains that she accepted her suitor's courtship only because she was "weary and distraught / With hunger" for the "food" of love. She suggests that, in her desperation, she would have accepted "any food" at all. Extending the metaphor, she protests that she had no way of "guess[ing]" what kind of "fruit" his love represented and that when she so much as "Nibbled" it, she found it awful.
From the start, then, the speaker heaps scorn on a man she considers a villain. She never really loved him, she implies; he just tricked her into thinking she did, because he preyed on her when she was weak. She never completely fell for him; she just "Nibbled [the] edge" of the love he brought, as if tasting a new "fruit," and even that small taste was disgusting.
- The speaker may be alluding, here, to the Adam and Eve story, in which Eve—tempted by a wicked serpent—eats the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If so, the implication is that her male partner is as wicked as the serpent and has taken advantage of her innocence. (The phrase "nowhere found it good," in line 5, may imply that his "love" is actually evil!)
Structurally, this first stanza also establishes a pattern that will continue throughout the rest of the poem:
- The opening line is a terse instruction to "Take back [something]," which is then repeated in the final line of this stanza.
- The four middle lines, meanwhile, expand on the instruction, providing context or explanation, before it's repeated.
- The first and sixth lines are set in iambic dimeter (meaning they consist of two iambs, or metrical feet that follow a da-DUM rhythm), while the middle four lines are set in iambic pentameter (which simply means they consist of five iambs).
- Finally, the rhyme scheme of the stanza as a whole is ABBCCA. This symmetrical structure sounds emphatic and authoritative, as the speaker commands, explains, then commands again.
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Lines 7-12
Take back your love.
It is a bird poach’d from my neighbor’s wood:
Its wings are wet with tears, its beak with blood.
'Tis a strange fowl with feathers like a crow:
Death's raven, it may be, for all we know.
Take back your love. -
Lines 13-18
Take back your gifts.
False is the hand that gave them; and the mind
That plann’d them, as a hawk spread in the wind
To poise and snatch the trembling mouse below,
To ruin where it dares—and then to go.
Take back your gifts. -
Lines 19-24
Take back your vows.
Elsewhere you trimm’d and taught these lamps to burn;
You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn.
You lit those candles in another shrine,
Gutter’d and cold you offer them on mine.
Take back your vows. -
Lines 25-27
Take back your words.
What is your love? Leaves on a woodland plain,
Where some are running and where some remain. -
Lines 28-30
What is your faith? Straws on a mountain height,
Dancing like demons on Walpurgis night.
Take back your words. -
Lines 31-36
Take back your lies.
Have them again: they wore a rainbow face,
Hollow with sin and leprous with disgrace:
Their tongue was like a mellow turret bell
To toll hearts burning into wide-lipp’d hell.
Take back your lies. -
Lines 37-42
Take back your kiss.
Shall I be meek, and lend my lips again
To let this adder daub them with his stain?
Shall I turn cheek to answer, when I hate?
You kiss like Judas in the garden gate!
Take back your kiss. -
Lines 43-48
Take back delight,
A paper boat launch’d on a heaving pool
To please a child, and folded by a fool;
The wild elms roar’d: it sail’d—a yard or more.
Out went our ship, but never came to shore.
Take back delight. -
Lines 49-54
Take back your wreath.
Has it done service on a fairer brow?
Fresh, was it folded round her bosom snow?
Her cast-off weed my breast will never wear:
Your word is "love me." My reply, "despair!"
Take back your wreath.
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“A Song of Faith Forsworn” Symbols
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The Adder
The poem uses many metaphors, but the speaker's comparison of her partner to an "adder" (lines 38-39) serves as a broader symbol. An adder is a type of venomous snake, and snakes are symbolically associated with craftiness, deceit, and danger. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, they're especially associated with the serpent in the Garden of Eden, which tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The juxtaposition of the "adder" lines with allusions to the Gospels in lines 40-41 (i.e., to Jesus's instruction to "turn the other cheek" when someone harms you, and to the "Judas kiss" that betrayed Jesus) suggests that the poet has the Bible in mind. By invoking this snake symbolism, the speaker implies that her partner is a wily deceiver who has stolen her innocence and happiness.
Although the first stanza doesn't mention snakes, its "fruit" metaphor might also call back to the Eden story. Here, too, the unfaithful lover is cast as a dangerous tempter, tricking the speaker with false love.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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The Raven
Ravens are black carrion birds. In many cultures and mythological traditions, they're seen as bad omens or symbols of death. (Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" famously plays on this symbolism.)
In lines 10-11, the speaker compares the love the speaker has given her to a dark-feathered, wounded bird—which may be "Death's raven [...] for all we know." In other words, his love has brought her great pain and misfortune. By mentioning a raven specifically, the speaker may even be foreshadowing some kind of death, whether the metaphorical kind (a feeling of having "died inside") or the literal (i.e., this betrayal might lead to violence or suicidal despair).
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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“A Song of Faith Forsworn” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration appears in nearly every stanza of the poem. It adds to the musicality of the "Song" while adding emphasis to key moments of the speaker's impassioned monologue.
For example, the bird metaphor in the second stanza is full of alliteration:
Its wings are wet with tears, its beak with blood.
'Tis a strange fowl with feathers like a crow:The repeated /w/, /b/, and /f/ sounds draw out the speaker's heightened emotion, almost as if she's sputtering with hurt and indignation. Elsewhere, alliteration adds vehemence to especially scornful phrases and passages, such as "Dancing like demons" (line 29), "folded by a fool" (line 45), and "fairer [...] Fresh [...] folded" (lines 50-51).)
The device serves other purposes, too, as in the leaf metaphor of lines 26-27, where it highlights the contrast between the leaves that are "running" and those that "remain." (In other words, between the love that the unfaithful partner no longer feels for the speaker and the love he does feel.) And in lines 34-35, heavy alliteration mimics the sound of a "bell":
Their tongue was like a mellow turret bell
To toll hearts burning into wide-lipp’d hell.Thanks to those emphatic /t/, /b/, and /h/ sounds, readers can almost hear that tolling!
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Sibilance
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Assonance
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Anaphora
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Metaphor
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Simile
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Parallelism
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Asyndeton
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Allusion
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Rhetorical Question
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"A Song of Faith Forsworn" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Forsworn
- Suit
- Distraught
- Poach'd
- Poise
- Trimm'd
- Stale
- Gutter'd
- Running
- Faith
- Straws
- Walpurgis night
- Rainbow
- Leprous
- Turret
- Adder
- Daub
- Wreath
- Fairer
- Weed
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False, marked by deceit (as in violation of a "sworn" oath).
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Song of Faith Forsworn”
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Form
The poem is a dramatic monologue that consists of nine six-line stanzas. The first and sixth lines of each stanza are identical, which the middle lines (the second through fifth) are longer in length and form a pair of rhyming couplets.
Although the wording varies each time, "Take back ___" functions as the poem's refrain, opening and concluding all nine stanzas. Refrains are common features of songs and ballads, and in fact, the title presents this poem as a "Song." As well as being memorable, the refrain provides a strong sense of emotional and thematic continuity. Although the poem contains some emotional development (e.g., the speaker sounds less vulnerable at the end than the beginning), it also hits some of the same notes repeatedly, with artful variations. Over the course of 18 repetitions, the refrain helps convey the speaker's anger and insistence as she spurns her faithless lover.
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Meter
The poem uses iambic meter throughout, meaning that its lines tend to follow an unstressed-stressed (da-DUM) syllable pattern. Lines 1 and 6 of each stanza use iambic dimeter (meaning they consist of two iambic feet: da-DUM da-DUM), while lines 2-5 of each stanza use iambic pentameter (meaning they consist of five iambic feet).
Look at how this pattern works in the first stanza:
Take back your suit.
It came when I was weary and distraught
With hunger. Could I guess the fruit you brought?
I ate in mere desire of any food,
Nibbled its edge, and nowhere found it good.
Take back your suit.The iambic rhythm remains very regular throughout. The only clear variation comes in line 5 ("Nibbled [...]" ), which begins with a trochee (a foot with a stressed-unstressed rhythm) rather than an iamb. It's also possible to read lines 1 and 6—and all the refrain lines in the poem—as beginning with either an iamb ("Take back") or a spondee ("Take back"). But in general, the poem sticks to a clear iambic pattern with relatively few variations.
Occasionally, however, the poet introduces variations for the purpose of emphasis. An especially noticeable example occurs in line 35:
To toll hearts burning into wide-lipp’d hell.
Here, the extra stressed syllables mimic the tolling of hell's bells: clang, clang, clang!
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem's six-line stanzas (sestets) follow an ABBCCA rhyme scheme.
Lines 1 and 6 of each stanza are identical, meaning that they include identical rhymes. Between these rhymes are two couplets.
The poet may have chosen this symmetrical scheme to suggest a kind of undoing or cancellation: the speaker's partner gave her false love, gifts, vows, etc., and now she wants him to "Take [them] back." Of course, the repeated lines and rhymes also add emphasis to the speaker's reproaches.
Most of the rhymes in the poem are exact, but slant rhymes also pop up here and there: "food"/"good," "wood"/"blood," "mind"/"wind," "brow"/"snow." (Depending on the speaker's accent, "again"/"stain" can also be a slant rhyme.) The repeated use of this device, which creates a slight sonic "mismatch," might be meant to reflect the romantic mismatch between the speaker and her partner.
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“A Song of Faith Forsworn” Speaker
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The poem is a dramatic monologue, meaning that it's written in the voice of a character who isn't the poet. The speaker is a woman reproaching an unfaithful romantic partner.
Given the strict romantic conventions of the Victorian era, when the poem was written, it's reasonable to assume that the speaker is female and her partner male. For example, he seems to have courted her formally, as a suitor presenting a "suit"—a role then reserved for men wooing women. It's not entirely clear, however, whether the two were still courting or already married when she discovered his betrayal, and the details of the betrayal are hinted at rather than spelled out. She doesn't mention any direct evidence of his infidelity, but she seems certain that he's told her "lies" and sworn empty "vows." (These could either be marriage vows or promises made prior to marriage.)
That said, the poem contains no evidence that she's mistaken about her partner; there's no dramatic irony to suggest that the poet's view contradicts the speaker's. The title specifies the poem's subject as "Faith Forsworn": basically, false fidelity or broken vows.
Several times, the speaker suggests that her partner has spent his real passion on another woman (or other women). She calls his love "a bird poach'd from my neighbor's wood," implying that it belongs to someone else. She compares his romantic vows to "lamps" or "candles" that he lit for someone else, and which were "cold" by the time he offered them to her. In the final stanza, she pointedly asks if another, better-looking woman originally wore his courtship "wreath."
At the very least, then, the speaker believes that her partner doesn't really love her, and courted her after—or during—a more passionate romance with someone else. The loaded word "ruin"—which, in Victorian times, could refer to a woman losing her virginity outside of marriage—raises the possibility that this man also seduced the speaker under false pretenses and hurt her social standing. Whatever the exact circumstances, the speaker feels betrayed by a man she considers a cheater and a cad.
The poem consists of her angry, sarcastic, accusatory farewell to the man who's deceived her. She claims that she accepted his advances when she was lonely and desperate (lines 2-5), possibly implying that she never really loved him, either. The next-to-last line indicates that he's still trying to win her back—perhaps still trying to marry her, or salvage their marriage—and that she's having none of it.
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“A Song of Faith Forsworn” Setting
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The poem doesn't specify a setting. It's a dramatic monologue addressed to an unfaithful lover, so the two partners are most likely meeting in private, but the speaker doesn't say where. All the references to places, landscape features, etc.—"my neighbor's wood" in line 8, "woodland plain" in line 26, etc.—are figurative; that is, they're elements of metaphors, not descriptions of the speaker's literal surroundings.
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Literary and Historical Context of “A Song of Faith Forsworn”
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Literary Context
Lord de Tabley was a 19th-century English writer, scholar, and aristocrat. Born John Byrne Leicester Warren, he became the third Baron de Tabley in 1877, when he succeeded to the title of baron upon his father's death. He achieved only moderate literary success for most of his career but won acclaim for Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical (featuring "A Song of Faith Forsworn"), published in 1893. He published a successful follow-up volume in 1895, but died later the same year.
Though not well known to the public for most of his lifetime, Tabley enjoyed the friendship and respect of fellow writers, including the more famous poets Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He published his early poetry under a series of pseudonyms, one of which—"M. A."—caused confusion when readers assumed it referred to the distinguished poet and critic Matthew Arnold. From 1870 onward, he published under his own name.
How "A Song of Faith Forsworn" might relate to Tabley's personal life is unclear. He lived semi-reclusively for many years and never married. As a student at Oxford, he was close with a young poet named George Fortescue, whose premature death sent him into a prolonged depression. However, it's difficult to know for sure whether their friendship was romantic or platonic, or what other romances Tabley may have had in his adult life. Romances outside of courtship and marriage, including queer romances, were typically well-guarded secrets in Victorian England, with its buttoned-up public morality and strictly defined gender roles.
Whether or not the poem indirectly channels the poet's private experience, it reflects those strict social conventions, as well as some conventions of Victorian literature. It's a dramatic monologue, meaning that its speaker is supposed to be a character or persona, not a version of the poet himself. Dramatic monologues were popular in Victorian poetry, thanks in part to Browning and Tennyson, who wrote many famous examples. In many respects, the poem's speaker reflects Victorian notions of ideal womanhood: she's pious, virtuous, and faithful to her partner (until she's betrayed). After a traditional courtship, she calls the relationship off because her partner's been unfaithful—emotionally, sexually, or both. The vehemence of her anger, however, is somewhat unusual for heroines portrayed by Victorian men.
Historical Context
Lord de Tabley was born in 1835, two years before the start of Queen Victoria's reign, and died in 1895, a little over five years before Victoria's death. Virtually his entire life, then, took place in what is now called the Victorian era (1837-1901). This was an era of rapid social and technological change in the UK, coupled with a moral code that limited gender roles, sexual behavior, and more.
Victorian courtship rituals varied somewhat based on social class, but followed a fairly strict dynamic. Typically, male "suitors" would begin courting a woman by obtaining permission from her father to do so. The first stanza of the poem makes reference to this kind of formal appeal, or "suit."
That said, the poem's romantic conventions—including that "suit" and the "wreath" mentioned in the final stanza—were already a bit old-fashioned in the late Victorian era (when the poem was written), and they now read as distinctly pre-modern. From the early 1900s onward, giving wreaths of flowers as courtship gifts became a lot less common!
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More “A Song of Faith Forsworn” Resources
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External Resources
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More on the Poet — A brief biography of Lord de Tabley, along with two of his other poems, via the University of Toronto.
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Criticism of the Poet — In this (slightly harsh) critical introduction, a writer assesses Lord de Tabley's work a generation after the poet's death.
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A Full-Length Biography — Check out a book-length biography of Lord de Tabley from 1903.
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Courtship in Victorian England — For context on romance and courtship in the age the poem is set in, watch this Weird History video on "What Dating Was Like In the Victorian Era."
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More on Victorian Love — Watch an Absolute History video on love in Victorian times.
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