Your interpretation of this Robert Graves poem?

Question

What are your thoughts on the meaning on this poem? I find myself coming to a different conclusion each time I read it and now I'm curious to see what other people think. And please note, this isn't for a school assignment, rather it's purely to help satisfy my own curiousity. Thanks for sharing your opinion on this poem!

IN PERSPECTIVE

What, keep love in *perspective*? -- that old lie,
Forced on the Imagination by the Eye,
Which, mechanistically controlled, will tell,
How rarely table-sides run parallel;
How distance shortens us; how wheels are found,
Oval in shape far oftener than round;
How every ceiling-corner's out of joint;
How the broad highway tapers to a point --
Can all this fool us lovers? Not for long:
Even the blind will sense that something's wrong.

~Robert Graves (1895-1985)

Answer 1

I believe he is implying that there's no way to keep love in perspective and no loving relationship is without imperfections, ie the wheel is oval instead of round, every ceiling-corner's out of joint etc. Rarely if ever would two lives run parallel and even though things seem perfect at times there will always be bumps along the way and as lovers we could never be fooled into thinking love could ever be perfect because even a blind man could sense when something is wrong.

Answer 2

OK, I'm an old romantic, and Robert Graves was not. So my reading is probably not the reading he intended at all. But here's what the poem says to me.

To keep things in "perspective" in the painter's sense of the term is to falsify them, to mechanize them, in order to fool the eye; e.g., " the broad highway tapers to a point." It's "that old lie," that makes it possible for us to see what we really don't see--can't see. It's what painters do to make us see what really isn't there, to make what is unreal seem real.

Common sense tells us to look at love the same way: love never lasts; first one love, then another; there are "a lot more fish in the sea"; two lives never run parallel; having sex is "making love"; "here today, gone tomorrow"; "out of sight, out of mind"; Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus; etc. That's keeping love in perspective, "mechanistically controlled." In other words, don't have false expectations. That's sensible!

But you can't fool us old lovers with such talk. We've been there, done that. But what we know, in our heart of hearts, is that Shakespeare was right in sonnet 116:

"Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

Even the blind, who cannot see at all (or those who have never yet experienced love), will realize there is something wrong with "perspective" (the mechanistic analysis of love, the common-sense approach). "Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove." Whether we've achieved it yet or not, what we long for is "the marriage of true minds."

That may not be sensible, but it's sensitive.

At least, that's my perspective!

Answer 3

I think he is getting at the impossibility of keeping any rational distance from the object of one's love. He names various visual "perspective" problems, that won't fool "us lovers" for long. But even the blind will know there is something wrong in trying to figure out love.

Answer 4

i believe he is saying lovers will always love. Even when they get hurt and almost doubt love they know deep down in side they will love again. But some one is talking to him telling him love is just a feeling to not place it on a pedestal. But he know temperarily he maybe able to do so but a lover willalways love and it will be only a matter of time before he loves again.