The Sorrow of Love
The Sorrow of Love - meaning Summary
Sorrow Restores Human Form
The poem contrasts an indifferent natural world with a human arrival whose mournful presence restores human significance. Yeats presents nature’s beauty and sound as capable of erasing "man’s image and his cry," until a grieving girl appears, her sorrow likened to Odysseus and Priam. Her sadness makes human suffering visible again, suggesting that love’s sorrow is what composes and confers meaning on human identity amid an expansive, indifferent cosmos.
Read Complete AnalysesThe brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man's image and his cry. A girl arose that had red mournful lips And seemed the greatness of the world in tears, Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships And proud as Priam murdered with his peers; Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.
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