Hear None, See None

“Unromantic Love” - J. V. Cunningham

“There is no stillness in this wood.

The quiet of this clearing

Is the denial of my hearing

The sounds I should.

There is no vision in this glade.

This tower of sun revealing

The timbered scaffoldage is stealing

Essence from shade.

Only my love is love’s ideal.

The love I could discover

In these recesses knows no lover,

Is the unreal,

The undefined, unanalysed,

Unabsolute many;

It is antithesis of any,

In none comprised.”

Through analogies, wordplay, and irony Cunningham attempts to illuminate the true and false nature of love. He contrasts the love of the ages, as described by Yeats and Browning, to the love that he is familiar with, an “unreal... undefined, unanalysed, unabsolute,” and, ultimately, an “Unromantic Love” (lines 12-14). Cunningham describes love as a thing that negates or contradicts reality. Human perception gives love an air of illusion and imperceptibility. Like a silent forest that actually stirs with sound, or a “vision” so embalmed in light that it becomes sightless, love eludes the senses and seems to occur devoid of purpose (lines 1-8). In Cunningham's world this irrational, unknowing love “is love's ideal” (line 9). In this poem love occurs in the material and physical world, yet is intangible and abstract as sight and sound. In this sense Cunningham speaks to the stereotypical depiction of infatuation and the blinding naivety of love; love as an experience, as opposed to an object. The irony comes into play as Cunningham identifies and explains love within a poem that labels love as being “undefined,” and “unanalysed” by literature. Here Cunningham clarifies the folly of men, to be both the subject of and subjected to the quandary of love.