Thoughts on "Love's Secret" by William Blake

Love's secret

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 sigh.

- William Blake

This poem is very difficult to comprehend and left me with a lot of cryptic clues and questions hanging in the air. The story has many levels. It is about love's secret of romantic attraction. It is also the story about a woman who rejected a man, and he tries to work out what went wrong - one of those things many of us might have experienced in our lives. The poet probably talks about his own experiences and his understanding of how love works. He believes that when he told the woman how much he loved her, it completely scared her off. It portrays his own perspectives, but allows us to see his uncertainty and many alternative possibilities.

It looks like he is contemplating unpredictable impulsive nature of love, fate, predestined love and loss... He finds that it is impossible to describe or define love accurately - it is an invisible thing. Love happens when the people are being natural. Love is natural, silent, gentle and invisible as the wind.

Is it wise to talk about the love we feel? Well, the man wanted/needed to tell her his feelings... and so he did. The poet tells us about how destructive it was when he poured his heart out to the one he loved and thus scarring her off. It seems like he was inspired to warn others about the dangers of professing love.

Love is not something that can be forced, analysed or explained - it could be lost. Love is unlikely to flourish when it is pre-empted or one-sided.

He was contemplating the possible reasons why it didn't work out, it seems like he needed an answer. He wonders if he did something wrong or if she wanted something different or more than what he offered. The man tries to understand the qualities that would attract this woman. The likely qualities are subtlety, independence, personality, experience, confidence, competence, clear intent, sharing... the qualities of a traveller.

Why did she reject him? For some reason, she felt he was not the one for her. Did she reject him gently? Either way, the rejection cut deep and left him confused, bitter and broken hearted. He is forced to move on and live with the memory of what happened. He might have tried to convince her to love him and felt that if he clarified things for her, that she would stay. She seems to find his declaration of undying love unattractive - he probably came across to her as needy, clingy, dependent or manipulative - this turned her off and she left. He regrets telling her how he felt and decides to protect himself in future by not talking about his feelings.

He was looking for the fault in himself, although it was her he could not understand and he received no explanation from her. He still looks back after the fact and tries to figure out what he could have been doing wrong. He seems to struggle to find the truth.

The traveller gets what the first man wanted... why? The man seems to almost admire the way the traveller takes her without making any effort. He might have imagined/portrayed himself as the archetypal traveller to show how he would have done things differently and how he wished things could have worked out differently. The traveller put his love into action, not words - in which case she was swept away with very little effort and wholeheartedly chose to be with him. Love was able to flow naturally. He distances himself from his former self and tells us what he has learnt.

Why didn't it work out? The moral is that there are many kinds of people and many ways of doing things, so be true to yourself, and the worst that can happen is that the person can reject you. After that you learn and life goes on and our experiences change our perspectives.

His apparent mistake left him cynical. His conclusion might be that talking about the love you feel is too difficult, that it is best avoided or that it is better to show your affection in subtle, pleasing ways, because an outright declaration of love is quite scary.

He reminds us of the variables at play in romance, how powerful personality is, how weak statements of love are, how one can become scared by too powerful statements, how we are so unpredictable, how much we need love and crave to understand love and how we can seem desperate and dependant if we are not careful.

In real life, Blake had his heart broken by a marriage proposal turned down. He scribbled the poem in a notebook which he kept with him for many years. The poem had lots of words and lines crossed out and he wrote two alternative last lines.