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AP Success - AP English Literature Poetry Analysis: "Law Like Love"

In W. H. Auden's poem "Law Like Love," the speaker contemplates the multifaceted nature of law through various perspectives and metaphors.

Read the poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Auden uses literary elements and techniques to present the concept of law as something that is both ubiquitous and elusive, drawing parallels to the nature of love.

In your response you should do the following:
• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible interpretation.
• Select and use evidence to support your line of reasoning.
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning.
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,

Law is the one

All gardeners obey

To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.

Law is the wisdom of the old,

The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;

The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,

Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,

Expounding to an uninterested people,

Law is the words in my priestly book,

Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,

Speaking clearly and most severely,

Law is as I've told you before,

Law is as you know I suppose,

Law is but let me explain it once more,

Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:

Law is neither wrong nor right,

Law is only crimes

Punished by places and by times,

Law is the clothes men wear

Anytime, anywhere,

Law is Good morning and Good night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;

Others say, Law is our State;

Others say, others say

Law is no more,

Law has gone away.

And always the loud angry crowd

Very angry and very loud,

Law is We,

And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more

Than they about the Law,

If I no more than you

Know what we should and should not do

Except that all agree

Gladly or miserably

That the Law is

And that all know this

If therefore thinking it absurd

To identify Law with some other word,

Unlike so many men

I cannot say Law is again,

No more than they can we suppress

The universal wish to guess

Or slip out of our own position

Into an unconcerned condition.

Although I can at least confine

Your vanity and mine

To stating timidly

A timid similarity,

We shall boast anyway:

Like love I say.

Like love we don’t know where or why,

Like love we can’t compel or fly,

Like love we often weep,

Like love we seldom keep.

Source 1.1

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