You Say You Love; but with a Voice
You Say You Love; but with a Voice - meaning Summary
Yearning for Authentic Love
Keats portrays a speaker demanding sincerity from a lover who offers muted, ritualized signs of affection. Each stanza contrasts restrained gestures—voice, smile, lips, hand—with the speaker’s burning desire, ending in an urgent plea for passionate proof. The poem charts growing insistence: words, smiles, squeezes and kisses must become genuinely felt rather than performative. It dramatizes the gap between conventional courtship and authentic emotional reciprocity.
Read Complete AnalysesYou say you love; but with a voice Chaster than a nun’s, who singeth The soft vespers to herself While the chime-bell ringeth— O love me truly! You say you love; but with a smile Cold as sunrise in September, As you were Saint Cupid’s nun, And kept his weeks of Ember— O love me truly! You say you love; but then your lips Coral tinted teach no blisses, More than coral in the sea— They never pout for kisses— O love me truly! You say you love; but then your hand No soft squeeze for squeeze returneth; It is like a statue’s, dead,— While mine for passion burneth— O love me truly! O breathe a word or two of fire! Smile, as if those words should burn me, Squeeze as lovers should—O kiss And in thy heart inurn me— O love me truly!
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