Love Is Not All Analysis

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Recommended: Representation of love in poetry

The poem “Love Is Not All” is a poem about what love cannot do for a person’s physical health and what love is not. Love is not food, water, medicine, shelter, or sleep, but love is still essential to people. Millay wrote “Love Is Not All” to show people what love is not, but by the end of the poem, Millay states that she does not think that she would trade her love for peace in a moment of suffering or the memories of a night with her lover for food. Love may not be food or water or shelter, but love can help prevent wars and suicide and other horrible events that happen in the world. The theme of “Love Is Not All” is that love is worthless when it comes to a person’s physical needs, but love is essential to a person’s mental needs.
In the poem “Love Is Not All” written
Millay says that love is not food, drink, sleep, or shelter, and love cannot save someone because love is not essential for a person’s physical needs. Millay starts her poem with these lines, “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink / Nor Slumber nor a roof against the rain; / Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink” (lines 1-3). Millay mentions that love cannot help a person’s physical health, “Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, / Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone” (lines 5-6). To Millay love is worthless when it comes to a person’s physical needs. One commentary interpreted the first part of the poem like this “Love is worthless from a physical point of view” (Everett and Gotera 1). When people think of physical needs, love would not be one a need that fits into the physical category but the mental category. People do not need love when it comes to their physical needs, but love is essential when it comes to mental

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