The speaker begins by naming a love so deep it feels ancient, overwhelming, rooted in something before time. He speaks to a woman—his bride, his wife—and the thought of her is more powerful and lasting than words can capture. Then the poem lifts off the ground. The beloved becomes “disembodied,” something pure and ethereal, a consolation that’s almost athletic in its spiritual reality. Suddenly, the voice turns toward a man, a companion of a roaming life, and the speaker claims he floats inside that love as well. The mood is ecstatic and untethered. It’s not about choosing one person or one gender; it’s about love as an expansive, ascending force that moves through and beyond physical forms. The poem feels like a deep breath taken at the edge of the world—intimate, radiant, and completely unconfined.
Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love. — Summary
PRIMEVAL my love for the woman I love, O bride! O wife! more resistless, more enduring than I can tell, the thought of you! Then separate, as disembodied, the purest born, The ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation, I ascend—I float in the regions of your love, O man, O sharer of my roving life.