Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 24-25
It's all I have to give,
and all anyone needs to live,
- The speaker repeats again to his beloved that the poem is all he has to give her. But he says the poem—and his love by extension—is all that anyone "needs to live."
- At this point, the poem and the speaker's love are clearly interchangeable. The poem is love.
- So, in saying that the poem is all he has to "give,/ and all anyone needs to live," he's also referring to love. What's that famous Beatles song? "All You Need is Love." The speaker would agree with that statement. Love is poetry and poetry is love—without them we can't survive.
Lines 26-30
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,
I love you.
- The speaker tells his beloved "to go on living inside." Inside what, you ask? He could be referring to a couple of things here. He could mean his cabin, continuing the metaphor from stanza 3. Or he could mean (again, figuratively speaking) inside his love, or even inside his poem. Or he could mean all three.
- That last possibility makes sense to us. His poem, like his love and this imagined cabin, is a place that can offer protection to his beloved.
- She's gonna need it, of course, when the world outside is hostile and doesn't care if we "live or die." When that bad stuff hits the fan, all his beloved has to do is to remember that the speaker loves her.
- These lines again affirm the relationship between love and poetry. The words "I love you" mean what they say: that the speaker loves his sweetheart. But these words are also a part of the poem that that the speaker is giving to his sweetheart. So the poem is love, and love is the poem.