Both poems discuss love and mention roses. However greater love discusses warfare where before the mirror is just about love. I thought that since we are doing WW1 poetry that the “maiden rows” would be platoons or trenches, but the poet of before the mirror died before the war began. The general theme from this poem is love has died; they use the winter to signify loss of love. The girl looking in the “gleaming glass” is not really unhappy but it seems she has missed out on love and she knows not why. There is some confusion in the poem, “art thou the ghost my sister… am I the ghost who knows,” the poem is full of disconnect. Also ‘is there sorrow hidden? Is their delight” shows the bitter sweetness of love lost. But greater love has none of this bitter sweetness, greater love just bitter. In war people lost their humanity, they were surrounded by death and went in expecting to be heroes. They couldn’t go back to their normal lives and fall in love because no one understood them, they were really disconnected. Many critics say greater love is a response to before the mirror and that makes sense. I think Owen was sort of saying in response to before the mirror, that people had a greater opportunity to find love than WW1 veterans did. And unlike the woman in the poem who doesn’t really know why she couldn’t find love, the war vets know exactly why, because they were severely damaged from war.
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