St Valentine's Night - Dannie Abse

From within this poem the audience sees that the key theme throughout is desire. From within the first stanza we are able to see the reference of cupid being brought in my the Greek God "Eros". From the name of this God the audience sees that his name is similar towards the word erotic to show this desire through the poem. From this the audience can continue further by seeing that this desire is to mainly reproduce and create life. From the phrase, "one eye closed" we get a detail that appears human and we imagine cupid as to being this human who is aiming by closing his eye. We get the impression that there is a personal anecdote with an "I" speaker with the phrase, "St Valentine's" and continues further with the reader able to see a memory of youth coming into the poem with the persona saying, "For me the first time". Abse then uses personification and pathetic falacy with how the moon flirts to a cloud and within the last two lines we begin to get a range of words that portray a decription towards the readers. From the use of "Black Magic chocolates" we are able to see that these sweets are seductive, sexy and dark but are also able to idealise a romantic hero that is tall, dark and handsome. From this we see a symbolic exchange occur within the first stanza.
As we move on to the second stanza we see that this stanza is filled with desire and emotion. This stanza is genuine and shows us a great deal of description that portrays not only the enjoyment of eating the chocolates but also the other meaning of the stanza which is the couple having sex with each other.
From within the final stanza we then piece together that in life you must have desire, for without desire you have no life. An ally is portrayed in this to suggest a friend but there is also another Greek God known as "Thanatos" who is the demon of death. He is a contrast between Eros for humans have the drive to not only live but to also die. From adding this God into this personifies death and shows us this notion of being driven to death. This poem is therefore suggesting to us that to keep fully alive you must have love, romance and desire. From this poem we see that the couple are mutual towards each other and this is shown through a simile of which portrays to us that they have had sex. Neither one is superior to the other, they are both equal for each gender is both eager and willing.
The difference between Larkin and Abse within this poem is that Abse is more personal and vibrant within this poem and also is more personal at describing the feeling of being in love whilst Larkin presents himself to be more critisising and judgemental.