Behn turns a conventional metaphor into a sharp comment on unequal feeling.
Song: Love Armed by Aphra Behn appears in the Songs of Ourselves, Volume 1 (Cambridge University Press), studied for IGCSE and International GCSE Literature (Cambridge International 0475). Your school confirms the anthology selection, and the board's current syllabus lists it for your exam year.
What the poem is about
The speaker pictures Love as a conquering ruler, enthroned amid hearts that bleed for him. She then explains where his power comes from. From the beloved's eyes he takes his fire and his cruelty; from the speaker he takes sighs, tears and longing.
Together the lovers have equipped a god and set him up as a deity. The turn comes at the end: the speaker alone is injured, while the beloved remains unharmed and free. The poem moves from a general scene of love's tyranny to a pointed, personal complaint about inequality between lovers.
Themes and ideas
Love as cruelty and tyranny
Love is a ruler who delights in pain. Behn presents desire as something that harms those who serve it.
Inequality between lovers
The speaker supplies emotion while the beloved supplies coldness. The poem measures how unequally love's costs are shared.
Pain, vulnerability and self-awareness
The speaker understands her own part in her suffering. Her clear-eyed tone gives the complaint dignity.
Power and gender
The speaker, a woman, speaks with wit about being used, a notable stance in a period when poetry about love was dominated by male voices.
Form, structure and sound
The poem has four quatrains rhymed alternately, with regular beats that give a song-like flow. Behn uses balanced contrasts, 'from thee' set against 'from me', to divide the lovers' roles with neat symmetry.
The personification of Love as a god with weapons is a familiar convention, but she twists it into an accusation. The final couplet-like turn leaves the sting in the last lines.
How to write about it
Show how Behn builds a clever argument: first a scene, then an explanation of how Love was armed, then an unequal result. Name the repeated structure of 'from thee' and 'from me' and say what it achieves.
Because the poem is public domain, brief quotations are fine. Connect form and meaning, and note the tension between a light, musical shape and bitter content.
A useful comparison for an anthology question is A Married State, because the two poems share enough ground to compare. Our guide to comparing two poems shows how.
A teacher can read Song with your child and practise a timed answer in a one-hour trial.
An exam-style question to practise
How does Behn present the speaker's feelings about love in 'Song: Love Armed'?
Plan your answer in five minutes before you write. Choose three points from the themes and form notes above. Then check your plan against the mark scheme section below.
More question angles
- Explore the ways Behn uses personification in the poem.
- How does Behn use structure to develop her argument?
How this maps to the mark scheme
Examiners mark poetry answers against assessment objectives. These are the skills the paper rewards. For Cambridge International 0475, the objectives are summarised on our qualification page.
- AO1: Show detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts in the three main forms (drama, poetry and prose), supported by reference to the text.
- AO2: Understand the meanings of literary texts and their contexts, and explore texts beyond surface meanings to show deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes.
- AO3: Recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects.
- AO4: Communicate a sensitive and informed personal response to literary texts.
- The four assessment objectives carry equal weight, about 25% each.
For Song: Love Armed, build your reading around “Love as cruelty and tyranny” and “Inequality between lovers”, and support each point with a short quotation. Then explain how the form, structure and sound in the section above create that meaning.
Where a question asks you to link poems, compare Song: Love Armed with A Married State. Keep any context about Aphra Behn brief and tied to the words on the page.
Read the poem alongside these notes. This page is our own analysis and original teaching material. Where we quote this public-domain poem, it is a short, attributed phrase.
Where to go next
Practise the method on an unseen poem with our guide to reading an unseen poem, then see a worked answer in our comparing poems model response. Browse more anthology poems or read about Literature in English tuition.
When you have written an answer on Song: Love Armed, a paid one-hour trial lesson lets the teacher who would continue mark it with you.