Read the following excerpt from Andrew Marvell's seventeenth-century poem "The Definition of Love" carefully before choosing your answer:
Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new Convulsion tear;
And, us to joyn, the World should all
Be cramp'd into a Planisphere.
As Lines, so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly Parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars.
In the second and third stanzas of the excerpt, the speaker develops a geometric conceit comparing the lovers to parallel lines. Which of the following best describes the thematic function of this conceit in the context of the poem's overall argument?
- emphasize that the perfect alignment and intellectual purity of their connection is the very condition that prevents their physical unionCevap
- Bindicate that the lovers' minds are in conflict, symbolized by the intersecting "oblique" lines
- Cconflate the speaker's emotional state with Marvell's personal struggles with political exile during the Restoration
- Dsuggest that the lovers will eventually overcome their physical distance through geographic travel and exploration
- Ereveal a shift in the speaker's tone from intellectual resignation to an optimistic celebration of romantic union