The Bath-tub
The Bath-tub - meaning Summary
Chivalry Cooling Like Water
Pound uses a single domestic image to describe fading desire. The bathtub metaphor equates warming water with initial ardor and its cooling with the decline of a courteous, idealized romance. The speaker addresses a woman admired yet ultimately unsatisfying, signaling disappointment tempered by civility. The poem compresses emotional change into a brief, ironic observation about passion’s practical limits and the mismatch between praise and fulfillment.
Read Complete AnalysesAs a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.
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