After Love

Arthur Symons's After Love

Arthur Symons’ After Love is a poignant meditation on the aftermath of a romantic relationship, exploring the emotional impossibility of transitioning from lovers to friends. Written in the late 19th or early 20th century, the poem encapsulates the aesthetic and emotional preoccupations of the Decadent and Symbolist movements, of which Symons was a key figure. Through its concise yet evocative language, the poem delves into themes of irrevocable loss, the dichotomy of joy and pain, and the refusal to accept a diminished form of intimacy. This essay will examine the poem’s historical and cultural context, its literary devices, thematic concerns, and emotional impact, while also considering Symons’ biographical influences and broader philosophical implications.

Historical and Cultural Context

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was a British poet and critic closely associated with the Aesthetic and Decadent movements, which emphasized beauty, sensuality, and often a melancholic awareness of transience. His work was influenced by French Symbolists like Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, who sought to evoke emotions through suggestion rather than direct statement. After Love reflects this tradition in its economy of language and its reliance on emotional resonance rather than narrative exposition.

The late Victorian and early modernist periods were marked by shifting attitudes toward love, sexuality, and relationships. The strict moral codes of the era often led to repressed emotions and unspoken tensions, particularly in matters of love and separation. Symons’ poem captures the anguish of a love that cannot be sustained in any other form—once passion fades, the speaker finds mere friendship intolerable. This sentiment aligns with the Decadent fascination with intensity and excess, where anything less than absolute emotional engagement is seen as a betrayal of experience.

Literary Devices and Structure

Though the poem is brief, Symons employs a range of literary devices to amplify its emotional weight.

Repetition and Parallelism

The poem opens with a striking use of repetition:

O to part now, and, parting now,
Never to meet again;

The doubling of “part now” emphasizes the immediacy and finality of the separation, while the phrase “Never to meet again” underscores its irrevocability. This structural parallelism reinforces the speaker’s insistence on a clean break, rejecting any lingering connection.

Later, the repetition of “too hard” and “too sweet” creates a rhythmic insistence that mirrors the speaker’s emotional turmoil:

It is too hard, too hard to meet
As friends, and love no more;
Those other meetings were too sweet
That went before.

The anaphoric “too” conveys an excess—both of difficulty and of past pleasure—that makes the present unbearable.

Contrast and Paradox

The poem thrives on contrasts: joy and pain, love and friendship, presence and absence. The lines

To have done for ever, I and thou,
With joy, and so with pain.

suggest that love itself is a paradox, containing both ecstasy and suffering. The speaker acknowledges that their past happiness is precisely what makes the present untenable—an idea reminiscent of the Romantic and Decadent fixation on the fleeting nature of pleasure.

Diction and Tone

Symons’ word choice is deliberate in its simplicity, yet laden with emotional weight. The phrase “Stoop to become your friend” is particularly striking—the verb “stoop” implies degradation, as if friendship were a lesser, almost humiliating state compared to the heights of romantic love. This lexical choice reveals the speaker’s pride and unwillingness to settle for a diluted connection.

The tone is one of resigned defiance. The speaker does not lament the loss of love so much as assert the impossibility of its continuation in any other form. There is a quiet dignity in this refusal, a refusal to compromise emotional authenticity for the sake of social convention.

Themes

The Irrevocability of Love’s End

The central theme of After Love is the impossibility of reversing or softening the end of a romantic relationship. The speaker does not merely mourn the loss of love but actively rejects any substitute for it. Unlike many poems that dwell on the sorrow of parting, this one takes a firm stance:

I cannot, having been your lover,
Stoop to become your friend!

This declaration is both a lament and a manifesto—an insistence that some experiences are so profound that they cannot be reduced without betraying their essence.

The Dichotomy of Joy and Pain

The poem acknowledges that love is inherently dualistic, containing both pleasure and suffering. The line “With joy, and so with pain” suggests that the two are inseparable, and that the memory of past happiness only intensifies present sorrow. This aligns with the Decadent and Symbolist fascination with the interplay of ecstasy and agony, as seen in works like Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal.

Pride and Emotional Integrity

The speaker’s refusal to “stoop” to friendship reveals a fierce sense of pride. There is an almost Nietzschean quality to this stance—an unwillingness to accept a diminished form of existence after having known intensity. This theme resonates with the Aesthetic movement’s emphasis on living passionately and authentically, even at the cost of personal suffering.

Comparative Analysis

Symons’ poem can be fruitfully compared to other works that explore the aftermath of love. For instance, in When We Two Parted by Lord Byron, the speaker also grapples with the impossibility of redefining a relationship after its romantic end:

If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears.

Both poems reject the possibility of a neutral or friendly relationship after love, though Byron’s speaker is more overtly sorrowful, whereas Symons’ is defiant.

Another apt comparison is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Sonnet XLIII:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten…

Millay’s poem reflects on the ephemerality of love, but with a tone of wistful acceptance rather than Symons’ resolute finality.

Biographical and Philosophical Insights

Symons’ personal life may shed light on the poem’s emotional intensity. Known for his tumultuous relationships and struggles with mental health, Symons often explored themes of passion, disillusionment, and existential despair in his work. His affair with the dancer Lydia Lopokova, among others, may have informed the poem’s raw emotional honesty.

Philosophically, the poem aligns with Schopenhauer’s view of love as a force that brings both sublime joy and inevitable suffering. The speaker’s refusal to accept friendship after love suggests an awareness that human connections are either all-consuming or meaningless—there is no middle ground worth inhabiting.

Emotional Impact

What makes After Love so compelling is its unflinching honesty. The speaker does not seek consolation or reconciliation; instead, they assert the necessity of a complete severance. This resonates with anyone who has experienced the awkwardness of trying to remain friends with an ex-lover, recognizing that such an arrangement often demands an emotional compromise that feels inauthentic.

The poem’s brevity adds to its power—there are no extraneous words, no digressions. Each line is a carefully measured expression of grief, pride, and finality. The reader is left with the impression of a door closing decisively, a love that refuses to linger in diluted form.

Conclusion

Arthur Symons’ After Love is a masterful exploration of the emotional impossibility of downgrading love to friendship. Through its precise diction, repetition, and stark contrasts, the poem captures the Decadent preoccupation with intensity, transience, and the refusal to settle for mediocrity in matters of the heart. Situated within its historical and literary context, the poem emerges as a powerful statement on the irrevocability of passion and the dignity of letting go entirely. Its emotional resonance lies in its unwavering honesty—a recognition that some loves are too vast to be confined to the narrow bounds of friendship.

In an age where relationships are often subject to renegotiation and redefinition, Symons’ poem remains a bold assertion that certain endings must be absolute—for to do otherwise would be to betray the very love that once was.

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