The Company of Lovers
The Company of Lovers - meaning Summary
Brief Solace Against Mortality
The poem depicts brief, consoling encounters among lovers who, aware of mortality, meet and part across the world. They abandon other pursuits for a single shared comfort and use touch and embrace to fend off fear. Night provides privacy for these transient unions, but the poem foregrounds an approaching, encircling death that makes the gatherings urgent and temporary. It presents intimacy as a deliberate, fragile resistance to an inevitable end.
Read Complete AnalysesWe meet and part now over all the world; we, the lost company, take hands together in the night, forget the night in our brief happiness, silently. We, who sought many things, throw all away for this one thing, one only, remembering that in the narrow grave we shall be lonely. Death marshalls up his armies round us now. Their footsteps crowd too near. Lock your warm hand above the chilling heart and for a time I live without my fear. Grope in the night to find me and embrace, for the dark preludes of the drums begin, and round us round the company of lovers, death draws his cordons in.
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