We Learned the Whole of Love

We learned the whole of love
The alphabet, the words,
A chapter then the mighty book-
Then the revelation closed.

But in each other's eyes
An ingorance beheld
Diviner than the childhood's,
And each to each a child

Attempted to expound
What neither understood
Alas, that wisdom is so large
And so truth manifold!

INTERPRETATION AND METAPHOR-The first verse of this poem presents a metaphor. The learning and increasing use of literacy is representing love, more specificly a relationship being formed and increasing in levels of intensity as the literacy of the speaker increases. "A chapter, then the mighty book" is the point where it could be interprerted that the relationship the speaker formed was finalized by marriage. "Then revelation closed" could be the point where daily life has taken it's toll on the couple and the love that the two once shared had been temporaily forgotten. The second verse tells us that the couple, although worn down by daily life, still cares for each other, although neither knows why, hence ingorance. Here love is idetified as childish. My interprertation of this is that love is childish in the way that love is blind to faults in the same way that a child is blind to faults. Thus love has made children out of the couple. In the 3rd verse again we are remined that neither one knows why they love the other, despite trying to find explanation in the 1st and 2nd line "Attempted to expound/what neither understood." In the 3rd line we are persented a contradiction when the motives behind love are implied to be wisdom, after they have just been called childish in the 2nd verse. Perhaps the reason this is refered to as wisdom is because love is inexpalinable it hold a vast, imortal persence, much like a divine being. Thus love is complex because it is child like and divine at the same time.

STRUCTURE, RHYTHM, AND NONEXISTANT RHYME-aking a look at the structure of the poem, we see a sturctured patter with the number of sylables in each line:

We Learned the Whole of Love

We learned the whole of love 6
The alphabet, the words,6
A chapter then the mighty book-8
Then the revelation closed.6

But in each other's eyes 6
An ingorance beheld 6
Diviner than the childhood's, 8
And each to each a child 6

Attempted to expound 6
What neither understood 6
Alas, that wisdom is so large 8
And so truth manifold! 6

Now examing this poem we can see that the number of sylables per line per verse follows a 6; 6; 8; 6 pattern and contains no rhyme scheme, making this poem an example of blank verse.The pattern of syllables adds structure in the poem and also creates a rythm that doesn't reinforce the point of the poem but makes the poem more oraly and literary pleasing to the reader. Also note the iambic trimeter in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th line of each verse. This pattern changes with the fourth line on the last 2 syllables, when both syllable are accented. This change in rhythm keeps the poem from becoming montonous in structure and gets the reader's attention.

This poem is an example of lyric poetry, due to its short length, indefinite topic, and emotional subject matter. Note that the poem contains no rhyme. Although rhyme is a sophicated, complex structure that is used in many worthwhile poems, it is popularly associated with children's litature, which would take away from the complexity of the subject matter.