“Before You Came” explores love's transformative effects on us.
The poet uses various
metaphors and vivid images to depict the beauty and sorrow of having a lover. The seemingly
ordinary world becomes agonising when not near the lover. The agony transforms into yearning
for the lover, and their return satisfies both heart and mind, and all seems alright again. The
poem also emphasises how one experiences life before and after encountering a lover for the first
time.
The poem begins with the poet’s perception of the world as usual: It is dull and static in that
nothing represents more than its objectivity and is hence observed as normalcy as it never
changes. The sky, road, and wine become significant symbols as we witness the progression of
the poet’s feelings and thoughts reflected as the symbols are treated differently towards the end
of the poem. Before seeing his lover for the first time, these symbols represent what they are, and
no intense or romantic emotions are evoked. The poet’s narrow perception of the world is
evident when he writes, “The sky was the dead-end of sight”. It is as though he cannot see more
than what the eye allows him to or to feel for more than what his daily rituals demand. It can also
be understood as a sign of resignation that the poet does not wish to escape from such a
constrictive perfection of the world. The dullness of the world becomes commonplace to the
poet. He resigns to it and accepts it to continue to be so.
The second stanza then talks about how his perception has since changed and how the feelings of
his heart dominate his thoughts about the world around him. The poet uses vivid imagery and
colours to express his perception that has changed with the entrance of a beloved in his life. The
poet uses colours of differing tones like grey to depict the lover’s absence, gold to express the
magical moment they met, red to describe his passion and black to emphasise how his world
feels solitary and lifeless with the lover’s absence. However, it is crucial to note that he is not
describing tangible things but things you can only experience and explain to others to let them
know about your feelings. These imageries do not contribute to a big picture but a state of chaos
when the heart is left unattended. When waiting for its visitor, its perception of the world is
distorted, and we see more than what is. The images also depict the rather sudden-ness in the
change in the poet’s perception. “a colour at the edge of blood:” he writes, as though if I were to
combine the colours he has used, it would produce the coagulated eery hue of red that the poet
signifies.
The word “coal” struck me here, leading me to a question: is this experience of love that the poet
talks about relevant to every point in history or unique to modernity? The temperament of the
poem is such that the emotions invigorated are central to modernity. The emergence of factories
(what coal reminded me of) signalled the birth of a new breathing entity - the city. In this course,
a constant theme concerning the poems we have studied thus far is the never-changing, boring
and repetitive hours of our days. The sky looks blue every day, the route to work is the same
road every day, and the modern man drinks wine daily as a routine way to celebrate the end of
the day and mark his retirement by heading off to sleep. However, in the third stanza, this
perception changes. “The sky is a shirt wet with tears, the road a vein about to break,” and his
wine glass becomes a mirror with which he sees the world. Not only is there a change in
perception, but the poet now desperately desires for the lover, almost on the verge of his veins
snapping. Love has brought more to his life, and he sees and feels more than he should, as
ascribed by the modern world. There is also a feeling of everything becoming topsy-turvy. The
individual is a subject of labour and a profit-producing entity in the modern world, an object of
the economy. But now, he introspects with his wine glass. He looks at the sky and road and
observes how it has been every day, and naturally, as humans do when faced with something
new, he does everything to escape from this danger. The only thing that will restore his sanity is
his return to normalcy and the usual way of life; maybe only his lover can fix it. If her absence
made him feel this way, maybe her return would bring him back to experience normalcy.
To conclude, “Before You Came” epitomises desperation and yearning to return with one’s lover
and return to the poet’s previous environment. “So the world may become like itself again:” he
writes, restoring the lost romantic poet to his rightful position.
