[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]" by E.E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Commentary

“I carry your heart” by E.E. Cummings is endearing, beautiful and romantic. Whereas Shakespeare highlighted romance through strict form and complicated metaphors, Cummings hits the same mark through loose form and simple metaphors. If you include the fifth line “I fear” in with the fourth line, this poem loosely resembles a sonnet with fourteen lines and an A/B/A/B slant rhyme scheme. It even ends in a couplet– which is an attribute of a Shakespearean sonnet.

This love poem says it all through an overload of affectionate possessive terms: my dear, my darling, my fate, my sweet, my world, my true! Then to bring it home, claims the secret of the universe is his love. A truly brilliant poem in E.E. Cummings’ traditional style– all lower case with no end punctuation.