Love After Love Time Quotes

Like that introductory phrase of so many beloved fairy tales (“Once upon a time…”), the opening line of “Love After Love” sets the story of the poem in a misty, indefinite time. But in this case, it’s the future rather than the past.

This “stranger” tells us that all was not well in the land of long (or not-too-long) ago. The “you” of the poem has had to overcome some past difficulty, in which they didn’t really know themselves, in order to move ahead to the future with a sense of hope.

Another thing that went wrong in the past? You gave your heart away. What were you thinking? That belongs to you, or… er, your heart. You belong to you; your heart belongs to your heart. Keep it straight, or else you’re in for a bad time. Luckily for you, that bad time seems to be in the past.

Even during the dark ages, when the chips were down, the past was not as bad as it might seem. The “stranger” here was you, and you actually did love you—even though the implication here is that you didn’t realize or embrace that fact in the past. This non-stop source of self-love, though, should be of comfort to you in the future. Good times are on their way.

You want to move on with your life? You want to clear those cloudy skies? Well, you’ve got some cleaning to do, bub. All those mementoes are tying you to the past, to a dark time that’s best forgotten. The only way to embrace the future is to wipe the slate (and those bookshelves) clean.

“Be here now.” It may sound like a hippy-dippy bumper sticker (you can probably find one on the bumper of a Volkswagen van), but that is a crucial message of this poem. You must allow yourself to be in the moment in order to truly reflect and appreciate yourself, your world, and everything in it. Take a load off, kick up your heels, and dig in.