Casabianca - an allegory?

Casabianca is definitely almost asking to be parodied. The fact that they used to recite it in elementary schools makes a lot of sense. When I first read it, it almost instantly reminded me of those ballads I begrudgingly committed to memory in elementary school--mostly because of its very simple abab rhyme scheme and the repetitiveness of the boy's cries.

However, while poking around on the internet for further information on the poem and the story of Casabianca, I read somewhere that Elizabeth Bishop, a modern American poet, wrote her own version of Casabianca, indicating that Hemans intended this poem as an allegory for love. Once I read this, and reread the poem keeping Bishop's version in mind (you can see it below), I saw the poem in a completely different light. While we can't be completely sure that this is an allegory that Hemans intended, the repetitiveness of the boy begging his father to respond to him, and the ballad sing-song-y nature of the poem, often reserved for epic love ballads (such as The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, a poem I had to memorize countless times throughout elementary school), make this interpretation quite plausible. It also definitely gives this seemingly very straight-forward poem another, more interesting dimension. I feel like the final lines of the poem, emphasizing the boy's "young faithful heart" could also support this interpretation, as well as the fact that love and faithfulness are definitely themes that reoccur in Hemans' poetry.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but as promised, here's the Elizabeth Bishop version for comparison:

Casabianca

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite 'The boy stood on
the burning deck.' Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.