To Others Than You
To Others Than You - meaning Summary
Betrayal Reframed as Friendship
The speaker confronts a friend who deceived and seduced him, describing betrayal as a theatrical theft of trust and affection. He summons that memory as a mirrored performance—smiling, deft, and misleading—whose charm concealed displacement of truth. The poem moves from personal accusation to a broader verdict: those he called friends are revealed as ambivalent enemies, admired for faults but ultimately untrustworthy and clouded by cunning.
Read Complete AnalysesFriend by enemy I call you out. You with a bad coin in your socket, You my friend there with a winning air Who palmed the lie on me when you looked Brassily at my shyest secret, Enticed with twinkling bits of the eye Till the sweet tooth of my love bit dry, Rasped at last, and I stumbled and sucked, Whom now I conjure to stand as thief In the memory worked by mirrors, With unforgettably smiling act, Quickness of hand in the velvet glove And my whole heart under your hammer, Were once such a creature, so gay and frank A desireless familiar I never thought to utter or think While you displaced a truth in the air, That though I loved them for their faults As much as for their good, My friends were enemies on stilts With their heads in a cunning cloud.
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