To Be in Love
To Be in Love - meaning Summary
Love as Fragile Restraint
Brooks's "To Be In Love" describes the inward, paradoxical experience of romantic longing: presence through absence, heightened perception, and constrained expression. The speaker feels enlarged and connected—colors and sensations shared imaginatively—yet controlled by fear of declaration. Physical desire is both sustaining and unbearable; silence becomes a "ghastly freedom." The poem captures love’s simultaneous enlargement and diminishment, where intimacy is intense but must not be fully spoken for fear of ruin.
Read Complete AnalysesTo be in love Is to touch with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well. You look at things Through his eyes. A cardinal is red. A sky is blue. Suddenly you know he knows too. He is not there but You know you are tasting together The winter, or a light spring weather. His hand to take your hand is overmuch. Too much to bear. You cannot look in his eyes Because your pulse must not say What must not be said. When he Shuts a door- Is not there_ Your arms are water. And you are free With a ghastly freedom. You are the beautiful half Of a golden hurt. You remember and covet his mouth To touch, to whisper on. Oh when to declare Is certain Death! Oh when to apprize Is to mesmerize, To see fall down, the Column of Gold, Into the commonest ash.
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