Oxford Study Skills: Close Reading Poetry

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]I always start by reading a poem out loud.

[00:00:03]This helps me feel its sound patterns and its rhythm.

[00:00:07]So, here is a poem called Farewell Love and all thy laws forever.

[00:00:14]Farewell love and all thy laws forever.

[00:00:18]Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.

[00:00:22]Seneca and Plato call me from thy law to perfect wealth my wit forward to endeavor. In blind error when I did persevere, thy sharp repulse that pricketh eyes so sore hath taught me to set in trifles no store and scape forth since liberty is leaver.

[00:00:45]Therefore, farewell. Go trouble younger hearts and in me claim no more authority.

[00:00:52]With idle youth go use thy property and thereon spend thy many brittle darts. Hitherto, though I have lost all my time me lusteth no longer rotten boughs to climb.

[00:01:10]Now, first things first, there were a couple of words in there which might have been unfamiliar.

[00:01:15]The word leaver here means preferable.

[00:01:18]So, liberty is preferable to love.

[00:01:22]Langer is an alternative way of spelling longer, which we don't use anymore in modern English.

[00:01:30]If you read a poem in an interview and there's a word that you don't know what it means, ask your interviewer.