To love life, to love it evenwhen you have no stomach for itand everything you've held dearcrumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heatthickening the air, heavy as watermore fit for gills than lungs;when grief weights you like your own fleshonly more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a facebetween your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again. Ellen Bass
About This Quote

In this William Wordsworth poem, the speaker declares that he is going to love life again after a long period of sadness and despair. The speaker declares that he will love life even when he has no stomach for it and everything in his life crumbles like burnt paper in his hands. In another line, the speaker declares that grief sits with him, making it impossible for him to live anymore. In the next line, he declares that he will hold life in his hands and find a way to love it again.

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