All Things Conspire

love oppression somber tense

All Things Conspire - meaning Summary

Love Thwarted by Forces

Judith Wright's 'All Things Conspire' depicts lovers kept apart by both external structures and inner impulses. The speaker sees social defenses, habitual identities and even their own love as forces that can erase individuality and prevent union. The poem argues that the world's arrangements and the lovers' separate selves intensify a divided desire. Only when these consuming passions are laid to rest—possibly only in death—could full unification occur.

Read Complete Analyses

All things conspire to hold me from you – even my love, since that would mask you and unname you till merely woman and man we live. All men wear arms against the rebel – and they are wise, since the sound world they know and stable is eaten away by lovers’ eyes. All things conspire to stand between us – even you and I, who still command us, still unjoin us, and drive us forward till we die. Not till those fiery ghosts are laid shall we be one. Till then, they whet our double blade and use the turning world for stone.