How Much?
How Much? - meaning Summary
Love as Changing Weather
Sandburg’s short lyric confronts the instability of professed love. A speaker asks for a measure and receives grand, variable answers—“a million bushels” one day, maybe “only half a bushel” the next. The poem treats affection as fluctuating and weatherlike rather than fixed or calculable. The closing image likens this arithmetic to wind measuring weather, suggesting feelings are transient, unpredictable, and resistant to precise quantification.
Read Complete AnalysesHOW much do you love me, a million bushels? Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more. And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel? To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel. And is this your heart arithmetic? This is the way the wind measures the weather.
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