Except for the Body
love
lyric poem
Except for the Body - meaning Summary
Love Alters Beauty's Scale
The poem compares the beauty of trees with the body of a loved person. Its speaker values trees deeply, but ultimately treats intimate human presence as more beautiful because it carries expression, privacy, and public life. The mock-serious language of a contest keeps the declaration affectionate rather than abstract, showing love as a standard that changes how the natural world is measured.
Read Complete AnalysesExcept for the body of someone you love, including all its expressions in privacy and in public, trees, I think, are the most beautiful forms on the earth. Though, admittedly, if this were a contest, the trees would come in an extremely distant second.
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