.." The imagery of these two stanzas has a two-fold meaning. First of all, under the force of love, the self goes forth or withdraws into its own core again. Moreover, the alternating seasons of spring and winter hint to the life and death power that love holds over the poet. The force of love is thus pulsating with the rhythms of life itself. Through the beauty and intensity of love, one can have a taste of death, intimated by the fragility of the poet's beloved, as well as a taste of immortality or infinite power. As the poet states, love is not comparable with any other power existent in the world: "nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals / the power of your intense fragility..." The poet's beloved, although very fragile, is able to compel and to fascinate the beholder: "[fragility] whose texture / compels me with the colour of its countries, / rendering death and forever with each breathing." Thus, love speaks to the person that feels it at once of death as the idea of fragility suggests, and of immortality as the idea of supreme power intimates.

Finally, love is described as an inexplicable and hypnotizing force. This time the poet shifts the use of the rose metaphor to describe the hypnotizing eyes of his beloved. He compares the 'voice' of his lover's eyes with the deepest of the roses: "(i do not know what it is about you that closes / and opens; only something in me understands...

However, it also ads a new element to the depiction: his beloved's eyes are "deeper than all roses," that is, the force of love is mirrored in them. The image of the deep rose seems to imply the idea of something that hypnotizes. The notion of fragile but penetrating force is restated when the poet compares the hands of his beloved with the drops of rain: "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands." The hands of the woman as small as the drops of water, but at the same time they have an inexhaustible power, just like the rain itself.
Thus, Cummings' poem offers a compelling depiction of love as a total, transforming experience that has a life and death power over the person that is in love. The power of love, although immeasurable, is subtle as the power of nature and its influence on the lovers is overwhelming. The poem thus translates the experience of love as one of the most crucial elements in the life of man. The significance of the poem resides primarily in the fact that it offers an insight into the way in which love acts as a commanding force on man, being part of the intimate rhythm of life, along with birth and death.

Works Cited cummings, e. e. somewhere I have…