If Hands Could Free You, Heart
If Hands Could Free You, Heart - meaning Summary
Longing Without Liberation
The poem addresses the speaker’s heart and imagines escape from earthly constraints if hands could free it. It lines up a yearning to flee over city, hill, and sea but then admits that such freedom would be hollow. The speaker realizes that even amid beauty and motion, what matters is human contact and rest. The final choice is to stay, preferring the security of a returned embrace to restless wandering.
Read Complete AnalysesIf hands could free you, heart, Where would you fly? Far, beyond every part Of earth this running sky Makes desolate? Would you cross City and hill and sea, If hands could set you free? I would not lift the latch; For I could run Through fields, pit-valleys, catch All beauty under the sun-- Still end in loss: I should find no bent arm, no bed To rest my head.
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