Madeleine

[Erthona]

In relation to this poem the non-speaker would be the false lover, it does not matter if the speaker is aware or not aware of this in the beginning, as long as he becomes aware of this in the end. The reader is told at some point that the lover is false in some way. The extreme, as in Lord Randal, is that the false lover kills the other for known or undisclosed reasons. The least extreme would be emotional betrayal, of course for the non-false love, it is all pretty much the same as heart break feels pretty much the same as death. So although there are many different takes on this theme, they all amount to much the same thing. So to answer your question specifically it could be any of those things as long as one of the characters experiences the other to be false in some way. In other words they feel betrayed. In your particular poem, it is a reverse (if you are male) as it is usually a woman who is willing to accept a false lover for temporary comfort as men in the past were much too prideful to do so, although that has been changing since the sixties, so that is fairly normal these days, and only odd compared to the full history of this type of poem. I'm thinking of the Kris Kristofferson song, "For The Good Times" :

"Don't look so sad I know it's over
But life goes on and this world will keep on turning
Let's just be glad we had some time to spend together
There is no need to watch the bridges that we're burning
Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body close to mine
Hear the whisper of the raindrops
Blowing soft against my window
And make believe you love me one more time
For the good times for the good times"

The false lover is one of the most experienced events for humans in love. Although the other person my not be truly false and have only fallen out of love, to the person still in love it feels like a betrayal and thus a "false lover" which is then dramatized to different degrees in literature, at least as far as the internal feelings are concerned. Although the person is really not dying, they of course feel like they are. One has to be an incredibly skilled writer to be able to pull this sort of poem off as it has been worked to death. I generally advise people that they should have ten years of writing poetry consistently and not be in love before attempting to write love poetry(not that anyone would listen to that ). One has to developed enough skill to be able to completely step outside the usual words and metaphors associated with love poetry and create a new metaphor (which is by no means easy) to express something about love. Within the love genre I would say that the false lover motif is one of the most difficult to write about. Maybe you would consider a nice pastoral, or a comment on current events

If you have any more question, I'll do my best to answer them.

Dale