Preview

Love By Billy Collins Summary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
546 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Love By Billy Collins Summary
The title of this poem suggests that this person will always have the heart of the person they love. The person could actually be holding their lover’s heart, or a locket or other heart-shaped object belonging their loved one. Figuratively, the person does not actually carry around their lover’s heart, but rather that the person will always be loved, cherished, and remembered by the speaker, no matter where their loved one is. In the first stanza, I think it means that he is always with his lover because he is always thinking about them. No matter where he goes, his lover will be there with him. It is like he is holding his lover in his heart, so therefore they will never be apart. In the second stanza, he at first says that he will never be afraid of anything so long as he is with his lover, that his lover will always, keep him safe. He then says that he doesn’t want anything more in life because he already has everything he needs. He is perfectly happy and content with having just his lover and nothing else. In the third stanza, he’s basically saying that this poem is a secret. He says that nobody knows and will never know how much he loves this other person. In the fourth stanza, he wraps the poem up by reminding his lover that they …show more content…
Most people think of the heart as a representation of love. During the poem he talks about how he carries the heart of his lover with him wherever he goes. I think that he’s talking about always having the other person’s love with him no matter where he is. In the poem, to describe how deeply the man feels about this other person, the author uses a lot of figurative language. He uses a metaphor when he says the tree called life, because he is trying to say that life is a tree, which it’s not. He uses symbolism when he says I carry your heart, because you can’t actually carry someone’s heart around with you, he is actually carrying their

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Chapter Four All four of the women finished dressing and met in the main entrance of the palace to greet their guests. The Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess of Baden were just arriving and stepping out of their carriage. Karolina and her mother stood behind the Princess and the Dowager Duchess as they curtsied and welcomed the royal couple while Theresia instructed the servants to take their baggage to their rooms in the palace. The Grand Duke acknowledged the Dowager Duchess and the Princess with a slight nod as he strode into the palace. The Grand Duchess meanwhile, said nothing while noticing the various stitching repairs made to the Dowager Duchess’s gown.…

    • 1175 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everything’s moving along great in their relationship until the early morning the Finman breaks into her Grandmother cottage and kidnaps a sleeping Aileana. He beats her unconscious when she fights the Finman. The Finman carries her to his boat and rows her to the Finfolk island of Hildaland. A floating island shroud in a heavy magical fog that humans cannot find.…

    • 1556 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story is set in both present day and 1800's China and San Francisco. The first half of the story was in modern day San Francisco, while the ending part was modern day China. There was also something like a mini-story that took place in 1800…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Reading this poem was confusing for the fact that it’s very receptive. It almost states every line in the poem more than once, but just uses it in different places throughout the poem. Overall, the theme can be understood that theirs a guy who can’t sleep hence insomnia in the title, because his lover has moved on. In the first stanza one line says “With no ring on her finger” and the line right after says “You cannot hope to hold her”. This means that the guy in the poem who can’t sleep has not asked his lover to marry him, hence why theirs no ring on her finger and therefore he cannot hold her. “She has another lover. Her heart is other where” means that the girl described in the poem that’s tossing around in bed has moved on. She has found someone else and possibly someone who will marry her, since her previous lover wouldn’t put a ring on her finger.…

    • 859 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The last paragraph at the same time also represents the prose as a whole: the life lesson, exploration, and emotion of love. The readers learn that one cannot trust anyone and can only trust oneself, as supported by the sentence “we are utterly open with no one”. Furthermore, the listing of “not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend” emphasizes that not even the closest person can be trusted, and that one can only trust one’s heart. Another life lesson is shown in “when young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always”, meaning that when ones are all young, ones always believe in true love and the live-happily-ever-after stereotype, but in the end ones come to a realization that hearts can easily break in reality, and that true love may just be a fantasy. House metaphor is also presented by the “brick up” in the “you can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant”, and illustrating that even the strongest hearts can break, which is further justified by the run-on sentence using the repeated “and”s. The author then visualized some examples of emotion of love in the end to stimulate, engage, and communicate with the readers that the heart, a well-accepted common metaphor for emotion, reminds the readers of its…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The structure of the poem is another way the poet presents his feelings about marriage. The sentence length in the first stanza suggests that it is quite a long and methodical process leading up to finding a partner for marriage, “but then”, in the second stanza; once it occurs its a lot easier and is almost sets you free. The structure also shows the contrast between pre marital life with the difficulties of living alone and benefits and pleasure of sharing your life with someone, this is done by breaking up the stanzas, with short phrases such as…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Desperation, Love, and Torment… The short story "Lessons of Love" by Judith Ortiz Cofer is a perfect example of faulty love, people who abuse love, and people who feel so deep about their love they will do anything for their "partner".…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Analysis of Beach Chairs

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Throughout the poem the author uses many different words and phrases to represent love and unity. There is no doubt that love is one of the words within the poem but there are also a variety of other such words as smiling, knowing, realize, happiness, and joy. As these terms are introduced into the poem the meaning of the words become deeper showing a more interwoven…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poetry essay

    • 589 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The poet also uses imagery such as ‘lakes and ‘swans’, to symbolise the peacefulness, and also to symbolise love. You notice words that show the subject is not alone, with ‘we’ and ‘our’. These words and also the motion of the swans, the lake, and the peacefulness are foreshadowing that the poem will take a turning onto love that is more literate. However I don’t think that the poems theme is so much about love in particular, but about a natural love, a natural pull that brings two people together even after hard times.…

    • 589 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The definition of love is something that varies greatly among individuals. In E.E. Cummings’s poem “i carry your heart with me”, Cummings effectively conveys that true love is a powerful force that brings complete unity between two people through the use of various literary devices such as capitalization, point of view, form, and imagery to enhance the meaning of his poem.…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Song Analysis

    • 598 Words
    • 2 Pages

    As the days roll by with the man away from his heart, he was wondering about their lost love. The 2nd verse emphasizes how the man really wanted for their love to be renewed. He was struggling in those times that he was lonely and disheartened. To ease his sadness, he kept reminiscing their memories together and until then, he wanted to make a move so that his woman can forgive her and they can love again. For the man, his beloved is his life, as the song says, “please love me or I’ll be gone...” Clearly, he can’t live no longer without her by his side.…

    • 598 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    This represents the lost in the poem and what people are subconsciously thinking everyday. Lines 1 and 2 epitomize this meaning because it says, "Even when I forget you I go on looking for you." This leads on to how life is symbolized in the poem as well. People go their whole lives not realizing they are lost and need time to themselves to become the person they have the potential to be. Some follow behind others and are just a copy of the person next to them, in effect they are not their own person and the things they do are not of their true choice. This symbolism is conveyed in the last two lines as it says, "What they say you who are not lost when I do not find you." In conclusion you are not truly living life if you are not living as yourself and as the…

    • 352 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Lover's Lover Diction

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the lover’s song, he/she applies repetition to stress that the love between one another will never cease. The lover uses multiple literary devices in his/her song, one of which includes a hyperbole that indicates that their love will end when a river jumps over a mountain. Along with the hyperbole, the lover personifies the salmon and continues to highlight the eternal love between the lover and his/her beloved in this line, “And the salmon sing in the street,” (line 12) this exhibits scenarios that are unlikely to occur. Additionally, the lover continues to emphasize their everlasting love with his/her diction in the song, “I’ll love you till the ocean is folded and hung up to dry.” (lines 13 &…

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem becomes more personal as Donne describes how his heart was stolen. “I brought a heart into the room/ but from the room I carried none with me” (Line 19-20) describes how he loved a girl greatly and gave her his all but realizes she didn’t have the same feelings as he.…

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The third stanza represents the uncertainty that people face while they are falling in love. This particular stanza is mostly rhetorical questions about his feelings. For example in lines eleven through thirteen says, "What merchant ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove?" These lines speak of his possible sadness and risk of heartache by falling in love. While at the end of this stanza the speaker answers all of his own questions with the statement "Though she and I do love." in line eighteen. Meaning that regardless of the bad things in life that could happen the speaker and his lover will love one another.…

    • 725 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays