Poems of William Blake Summary and Analysis of Love's Secret
Summary
The basic story here is of a speaker who lets his lover know of his feelings and emotions toward her, which in turn results in the lover's repudiation of him: “Trembling cold in ghastly fears / As she doth depart!” Never to be one who spends too much time in self-pity mode, Blake (as speaker?) quickly reverses his bleak situation in the last stanza by rekindling his spirits and assuming the ‘traveler’ loves him as well, because of his/her ‘invisibility’ and silence toward him as she passes. The emotional effect this plays on the reader is playful, taking him/her from one of pity to one of humor, now laughing with the speaker with whom only a few lines earlier he/she was feeling sorry for.
Analysis
A break away from Blake’s regular themes of lost innocence and political/religious restraint on the human soul, “Love’s Secret” offers the reader a refreshing look at a speaker exploring the themes of the freedoms one experiences by not being in love: freedom from jealousy, freedom from admiration and affection, freedom from desire, and freedom from want. As sardonic as it is, the poem offers up the advice that one is better off not announcing one's affection for another, but rather should remain “silent and invisible.”
As with all things Blake, there is a deeper message here and that is that there is no denying silence. The speaker decided to wear his heard on his sleeve to his beloved, telling her “all [his] heart” and gets left alone and dejected. The opening line is advising, or instructing, “Never pain to tell thy love,” which is much different from the last line which is tongue-in-cheek and a bit of ridicule.
This poem has also been interpreted as the traveler coming in the final stanza as another lover, who the speaker’s beloved turns to for refuge, and who accepts her with no “deny.” Either interpretation is valid and acceptable.
The poem opens with the speaker meeting his love down by the salley gardens (wherever those may be—it's not clarified in the poem). She tells him to take love easy like the leaves growing on the trees. But, since the speaker is young and foolish, he doesn't listen to her and pretty much blows her off. Later, the two are hanging out by a river and this time the girl with snow-white hands tells him to take life easy. But again, the speaker is young and foolish, and ends up full of tears after not taking the young girl's advice. Sad times.