If Though Must Love Me Response

2 Pages 551 Words

Poetry to me is a way to express thoughts or feelings in an artistic and meaningful way. The poem “If Thou Must Love Me” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is more or less a love poem that sends many messages to me about love. A few of Browning’s messages are that true love is forever, love transcends image, and the use of love is too common.
The first message in Browning’s poem, true love is forever is directly supported. Line 14, “love’s eternity” says that love is forever. The whole poem talks about how sometimes love is called love but may not necessarily be true love in fact, and thus won’t last forever. “Except for loves sake only”, line 2, means that if one loves the person for love of that whole person then the love is genuine and will forever exist.
The second message in Browning’s poem is that love transcends image. One cannot love someone because of some physical beauty, “Do not say ‘I love her for her smile-her look’ ”, she doesn’t desire to be loved for this reason. Nor does she want to be loved because of her manner of speech “Do not say…her way of speaking gently”.
The last message that I can relate to in this poem is that the use of love is too common. Browning says several times that she doesn’t want to be loved for such superficial things. Love is a deep and meaningful thing that shouldn’t be conditional, this is supported by lines 9 through 12, “Neither love me for thine own dear pity’s wiping me cheeks dry-A creature might forget to weep, who bore thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby”. Furthermore, if love is based on superficial things then when these things change that the foundation for the love is thus lost, “For these things in themselves, beloved, may be changed, or change for thee-and love, so wrought, may be unwrought so”
This poem was chosen for the personal response because for me, love is a touchy subject. To me love is something th...