The Love a Life Can Show Below
poem 673
The Love a Life Can Show Below - meaning Summary
A Fragile, Transcendent Love
The poem contrasts ordinary human affection with a larger, ineffable divine love. Dickinson presents earthly love as a thin filament or hint of a power that both wounds and uplifts, visible in music, summer light, and distant horizons. The feeling is ambivalent and transformative: it causes pain and enchantment, dissolves and returns, and ultimately points beyond itself toward a paradisal, spiritual reality.
Read Complete AnalysesThe Love a Life can show Below Is but a filament, I know, Of that diviner thing That faints upon the face of Noon And smites the Tinder in the Sun And hinders Gabriel’s Wing ‘Tis this in Music hints and sways And far abroad on Summer days Distils uncertain pain ‘Tis this enamors in the East And tints the Transit in the West With harrowing Iodine ‘Tis this invites appalls endows ; Flits glimmers proves di ssolves Returns suggests co nvicts enchants Then flings in Paradise
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