Do Not Accept
Do Not Accept - meaning Summary
Endurance Through Delayed Consolation
The speaker counsels against accepting belated comfort, urging the addressee to preserve pain as a desert image and to refuse surrender. They advocate deliberate solitude and austerity rather than learning from experience. Personal memory and shared identity are offered as models: the speaker’s past becomes the listener’s present. The poem closes on a bleak circularity, suggesting names and roles revert and nothing essentially changes despite attempts at consolation.
Read Complete AnalysesDo not accept these rains that come too late. Better to linger. Make your pain An image of the desert. Say it's said And do not look to the west. Refuse To surrender. Try this year too To live alone in the long summer, Eat your drying bread, refrain From tears. And do not learn from Experience. Take as an example my youth, My return late at night, what has been written In the rain of yesteryear. It makes no difference Now. See your events as my events. Everything will be as before: Abraham will again Be Abram. Sarah will be Sarai.
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