It's safe to say that the speaker is in awe of his lover and the love he carries with him. "[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]" is a great example of a modern poet borrowing some of the awe and amazement the Romantics were all about and bringing that feeling up-to-date. We've still got the occasional romantic cliché, but Cummings is careful to balance the clichés with his avant-garde style.
Questions About Awe and Amazement
- How do we know the speaker is amazed by the love he carries with him? Do we have any instances of the speaker seeing the world in an "amazing" way?
- How does Cummings balance the awe that's associated with the romantic cliché with his modern form and style?
- Does the third stanza resonate as sounding rather "awesome" and inspired? If so, how does Cummings use language to create this feeling?
- Does the speaker's first-person voice help to create this feeling of awe and amazement? If the speaker had a third-person voice, would that feeling be the same? Why do you think so?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.
Love is an amazing thing (as a concept anyway), so it makes sense that the speaker would see the rest of the world in such an "awesome" way.
The speaker may be amazed, but he takes his time getting there. It's not until the third stanza that we start to hear the speaker thinking in an awe-inspired way with that "tree called life."