E. E. Cummings

Humanity I Love You

Humanity I Love You - meaning Summary

Affection Laced with Disgust

Cummings addresses humanity with an ironic, intimate voice that alternates affectionate appraisal and quiet contempt. He catalogs ordinary hypocrisies and small human follies — preference for success over empathy, sentimental clichés, self-deception, and misplaced pride — treating them as reasons both to love and to mock people. The poem closes with a sharp volte-face: after the affectionate inventory, the speaker bluntly confesses, "Humanity i hate you."

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Humanity i love you because you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both parties and because you unflinchingly applaud all songs containing the words country home and mother when sung at the old howard Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink and when you're flush pride keeps you from the pawn shops and because you are continually committing nuisances but more especially in your own house Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it's there and sitting down on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap of death Humanity i hate you

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