I So Liked Spring -- Charlotte Mew

(Poem #1141) I So Liked Spring I so liked Spring last year Because you were here; -- The thrushes too -- Because it was these you so liked to hear -- I so liked you. This year's a different thing, -- I'll not think of you. But I'll like Spring because it is simply Spring As the thrushes do. -- Charlotte Mew

One of the things I enjoy about love poetry is the thousand subtle
variations played upon every theme, the appeal to universal emotions and
experiences that manage to be at once common to every poem and different in
each one of them.

Today's poem is, indeed, combined out of several common themes and elements.
Where its beauty lies is in the delicate arrangement of those elements, the
simple but precise combination of images and the way they blend into a
complete poem. Even the rather faltering metre and phrasing are a deliberate
and carefully crafted effect, echoing the narrator's 'simple' outlook - as
Shine Kannikkatt put it in his comment to Poem #1084, there is a
  'vulnerability' evident in this and others like Teasdale's works [...]
  poems which remind us of the preciousness of life / small things which
  does have big impacts and 'longing' etc.
that definitely adds to the poem's appeal.

martin

Links:
  Biography:
    [broken link] http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/poetry/charlotte_mew.shtml
    http://www.sappho.com/poetry/c_mew.html

  Minstrels Links:
    Poem #315: Hilaire Belloc, 'Juliet'
    Poem #430: Sara Teasdale, 'Wild Asters'