Analysis of Thomas Carew’s “Ingrateful Beauty Threatened”

Analysis of Thomas Carew’s “Ingrateful Beauty Threatened” 

The speaker in this poem criticizes a woman named Celia for her pride. He claims that he is the reason she is famous: “I gave thee thy renown.” Without him and the poetry he wrote about her, she is just another unremarkable person in a crowd who “lived unknown.” He states that his verses about her “imp’d the wings of Fame,” which has a negative connotation since an imp means either a demon or urchin. He goes on to state that her “killing power” and her sweets and graces were given to her by him and they are therefore his, implying that he exaggerated her qualities when he wrote about her. He briefly praises her as his “star” but then returns to criticizing her when he states that she tried to “dart” from her “borrow’d sphere” that is his sky. He also repeats the word “my” in his metaphor, which enforces the idea that he created her and she is therefore his. However, he goes on to curse himself for making her famous in the first place: “Lightning on him that fix’d thee there.” He commands her to leave him alone or else he will make sure she is no longer renowned. His criticism continues when he state that only fools world adore her because he has seen what she is really like and it is nothing like in his poems. He concludes with the idea that poets exaggerate their subject’s better qualities and only the poets truly know what their subject is like afterwards when all people know of the subject is from a praising poem.  

The tone of the poem is commanding, critical, possessive, and somewhat jealous. The first word of the poem is a command to Celia and the final stanza also begins with a command. The first line of the poem shows how critical the speaker is of Celia because he coldly addresses her with a command followed by a callous remark about her pride. His criticalness is seen again later when he curses himself for making her famous because he believes that that was a bad decision on his part. Later, the criticalness comes up again when he states that he will know her in her “mortal state,” which implies that she is not as good as he writes her as being and thereby belittles her. Throughout the poem, the speaker emphasizes that he is the one who made Celia famous and he often repeats words like “my” and “mine.” This shows that he is possessive of both her and his work about her to the point where he condemns her for trying to leave her “borrow’d sphere.” This can also imply that he is somewhat jealous of her and her fame. He believes that the fame should be his since it is his poem and worries that she will still be successful without him. 

“Ingrateful Beauty Threatened” by Thomas Carew is about a speaker who, in a commanding, critical, possessive, and jealous tone, scorns a former subject of his poems because he believes that she is only famous because of him.