Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Iambic, Short lyric
"Never seek to tell thy love". Reading and analysis. Introduction to the poetry of William Blake # 2
Working through the poem stanza by stanza, I examine how Blake presents love as a silent, invisible force like the wind, while "telling" love leads to loss and departure. The analysis reveals deeper layers: the verb "told" as a homophone for "tolled" (like a funeral bell), the older meaning of "tell" as "count" or "measure," and the connection to Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear - who also refused to measure out her love in words.
What's covered:
The central opposition: love (positive) vs telling love (negative)
Action and movement vs words and speech
Multiple meanings of "tell" and "told"
Blake's friend Fuseli's King Lear painting and its possible influence
How Blake uses verb analysis to reveal meaning
Part of a series on Blake's philosophy of contraries. Next: "A Poison Tree" and the consequences of not telling.
How it's for:
For students studying Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, A-Level/university literature courses, or anyone interested in multi-layered poetic analysis.
0:00 Intro
0:30 Never seek to tell thy love: A reading
1:14 Love (positive); telling love (negative)
1:58 Expressing vs. telling
2:09 Looking at the verbs
2:50 Action vs. words
3:05 "Told" and "tolled"
3:35 Telling and counting
4:00 Cordelia in King Lear
4:18 Fuseli's painting
4:29 Conclusion
In this second video in the series on Blake's poetry I examine the way in which Blake creates a contrast between words and action in his deceptively simple poem, "Never seek to tell your love", sometimes known as "Love's secret".
The first video in the series can be found here: https://youtu.be/WXBXodU5qKI
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Never seek to tell thy love
Love that never told can be
For the gentle wind does move
Silently invisibly
I told my love I told my love
I told her all my heart
Trembling cold in ghastly fears
Ah she doth depart
Soon as she was gone from me
A traveller came by
Silently invisibly
He took her with a sighShow More
3 Comments
0:00 Intro
0:30 Never seek to tell thy love: A reading
1:14 Love (positive); telling love (negative)
1:58 Expressing vs. telling
2:09 Looking at the verbs
2:50 Action vs. words
3:05 “Told” and “tolled”
3:35 Telling and counting
4:00 Cordelia in King Lear
4:18 Fuseli’s painting
4:29 Conclusion
Thanks for the deep insight made simple and smoothly flowing!
Telling – language – complements that which lacks self evidence. Love at its best is to be so strongly expressed in factual reality that language only reverts to express the lacking (part) of it. This does not mean that love is never to be verbally expressed, but that such expression comes in a less than ideal state.
Similarly; Eric Segal says in ‘Love Story’: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry’. Mattis Weinberg (Frameworks 3, 93) argues that: ‘Love means always needing to say you’re sorry’, for if you violate the boundaries of the other, you destroy the bond of love. These two positions talk about the different states above mentioned. While Segal portrays the idealistic romantic yearning for collapsed boundaries (imaginable within a boundary-less love of Being), Weinberg portrays the prior realistic state in which lays the danger of romantic delusion!
Yes, indeed. Blake tends to emphasize the contrasting sides of life, and here he stresses the importance of deeds over words. In other poems, too, he values those who express themselves through action over those who just talk about it.