Love Is Not All

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In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, “Love is not all”, the speaker begins by defining love as not sensible, solid or stable. She suggests that love has little to do with our current physical needs and serves no function for sustaining life. It investigates situations of pain and misfortune and finds none where love would make any difference. However,The speaker breaks the pattern by declaring that the absence of love will cause a man to exist closer to death. Even though love is a preoccupation and cannot physically aid her, she would not trade it for any physical comfort or relief. By saying love is something she declares what love is by giving examples of what it isn’t. Love is not an object, an act, a spirit, or a thought. It is what persuades us to live. Even though love may seem unimportant at times, it is essential for life. The title of the poem “Love is not all” points out the inadequacies of love when compared to the basic necessities of life. The speaker inventories all the things needed to sustain life that love cannot replace. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; (1-6 It is apparent that the speaker covers every need that we require to live and effectively demonstrates that love cannot provide any of these needs. Love does not provide us with the food that we need to keep us alive or to fill our empty bellies when we are starving . It also cannot give us what we require to quench our thirst and keep our bodies functioning “it is not meat nor
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