The Most Powerful 4 Letter Life-changing Word : Love
Love is something that is inevitable in human nature. Everybody yearns for affection with somebody and there are so many variations. Those variations can include but are not limited to family love, romantic love, lost love. The powerful feeling of love can make a person feel so fortunate that they become oblivious to the rest of the world. But sometimes that is not the case due to the situations that can drastically change a person’s life. The universal theme of love is expressed in thought-provoking words and the feelings of sorrow and joy are portrayed in the poems “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” by W.H. Auden and “To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet and the song “All Out of love” by Air Supply.
Losing somebody a person loves can be a horrific experience to go through because once they are gone, you can never get them back again. All you can do is remember them with the memories that they left behind. In W.H. Auden’s poem, the female narrator address her grief after losing the person she loves and also expresses what he meant to her. The speaker points out,“He was my North, my South, my East, and West, My working week and my Sunday rest” (9-10). This person that passed away symbolized not only the compass directions, but also all the days of the week that we live in everyday for three hundred sixty-five days a year and twenty four hours a day. This shows that her significant other whom she lost is a part of her everyday life and she cannot contemplate a life where he is not a part of it. Hence, her bereavement is so extreme she wants everybody else to accompany her and lament with her. “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone” (1-2). It is evident that she wants everything to be perfect for her partner’s funeral and wants the whole world to freeze and stop what they are doing so that they can also mourn with her.
Contrary to W.H. Auden’s poem which talks about love and mourning for that loved one, Anne Bradstreet’s poem depicts as a happier version of love. In this poem, she expresses a deep affection toward her husband and intensifies that emotion when she compares her love toward nature. She states, “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold… My love is such that rivers cannot quench” (5-7). She values her love toward her husband more than nature’s own gold, which is an immense quantity and not even water can fulfill her compared to her husband’s love toward her and vice versa. The deep-rooted love that she expresses is pure, more pure than nature’s own creation, gold and water. This is also proof that their love is forever when she states, “Then while we live, in love let’s so persever, That when we live no more we may live ever” (11-12). She will hold onto the memories that they formed together in a place in her heart that will enable her to love him forever even after they are no longer breathing in this world.
The song “All Out of Love” is predominantly about one person in a relationship losing somebody they love, probably through a breakup, and that person is expressing missing their significant other. The song states, “I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you” (9). To this person, they feel very empty inside without the companionship of their partner and feels confused about not knowing what to do. Similarly to “Stop all the Clocks, cut off the telephone”, the female speaker and the song both show the emotion of grief over losing somebody they love, one who is deceased and the other was a breakup, respectively. The speaker in the poem illustrates this by saying, “I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong” (12). The speaker was hopeful that their love would last for eternity, but that was not a valid statement because he was taken away from her so soon. Both people from the song and poem have an attitude of nothing in their surrounding mattering because they lost their dearest and to them the world froze just like their heart. This song is also similar to the poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” when the song states “I'm lying alone with my head on the phone, Thinking of you till it hurts” (1-2). Even though the song is a breakup song and the poem is about a pleasant situation it can be inferred that the woman in the poem deems herself really lucky to have her husband in her life and his love. This is emphasized when the speaker says, “Thy love is such I can no way repay” (9). In a way like the song she thinks she is blessed by his deep love for her, and that sometimes thinking about this hurts her but in a more positive light. His love is so pertinent and significant to her, that she does not know what to do to give him back the love that he gives to her.
Love evokes many emotions in a person, which consist of both happiness and sadness, all of which are inevitable. For example, in “Stop all the clocks, cut of the telephone” the woman lost the love her life, when she expected that their love would be endless, but unfortunately that was not the case. Meanwhile in “To My Dear and Loving Husband” the wife shows her love for her husband and how she will cherish all the moments they have together so that in their afterlife they will still have that connection. Both poems signify love, but the difference is that in W.H. Auden’s poem compared to Anne Bradstreet’s poem her lost love meant lost hope while in the latter poem she loves her husband so much that she is confident it will last for an eternity.
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