The speaker insists he fully believes his lover possesses both beauty and common sense—a rare combination. But watching her lie there, her upturned face almost dreamlike, nearly shakes that confidence. What restores him, oddly, is her voice: when she speaks to the thirsty, inner part of him, he finally feels like a man, finally feels matched. Yet satisfaction never fully arrives. Some stubborn corner of his mind keeps fretting, a “dying something never dead,” even when nature gives all it can. He concludes bitterly that no single woman can cure the wounds her sex inflicts—you wouldn’t seek out a venomous asp to heal a snakebite. The mood is taut with ambivalence: there’s tenderness, even relief, in her presence, but it’s edged with longing for something wilder, something like the frenzied Bacchantes he imagines clasping. It’s a portrait of desire that can’t rest, caught between domestic calm and a hunger for ecstatic release.
Modern Love XXXII: Full Faith I Have — Summary
Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie With her fair visage an inverted sky Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift, Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth (Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address The inner me that thirsts for her no less, And has so long been languishing in drouth, I feel that I am matched; that I am man! One restless corner of my heart or head, That holds a dying something never dead, Still frets, though Nature giveth all she can. It means, that woman is not, I opine, Her sex's antidote. Who seeks the asp For serpent's bites? 'Twould calm me could I clasp Shrieking Bacchantes with their souls of wine!