If you love for the sake of beauty

If you love for the sake of beauty

Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866)

Anonymous Translator

If you love for the sake of beauty, O never love me!
Love the sun, which has bright golden hair.
If you love for the sake of youth, O never love me!
Love the spring, which is reborn each year.
If you love for the sake of wealth, O never love me!
Love the mermaid, whose pearls are rich and clear.
If you love for the sake of love alone, O yes then, love me!
Love me as I love you—forever!

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This is actually my assignment, but because I like this poem, I feel like to post a part of my analysis here.

In short, the speaker states that if the listener loved her merely for the sake of her beauty, youth, or wealth, he should never love her, because her beauty, youth, and wealth is not going to stand forever, and  it will vanish in time. I think the speaker of this poem  is a wealthy young beautiful lady, yet agitated because she knows someday those will vanish gradually, and will turn into nothing.

“Love the sun, which has bright golden hair.” Unlike human’s beauty, Rückert represents the sun as a symbol for eternal beauty with its inextinguishable bright flare. Here he puts visual imagery portrays a lady looks up the beautiful bright sun hovering in the sky.

“Love the spring, which is reborn each year”, here, unlike the human’s youth which will be consumed by time, Rückert epitomizes the spring as something everlastingly young and never-get-old and dies because it will have always born each year until the end of time. Rückert expresses it by attaching visual imagery in implied depicts a meadow with a green grass and growing leaves, flying butterflies and blossoming flower.

“Love the mermaid, whose pearls are rich and clear.” Rückert represents the mermaid as the symbol of inexhaustible wealth, unlike human’s wealth that will be decreased. Rückert uses visual imagery as well to depict deep of ocean floor, the mermaids with countless pearls are swimming freely amid countless glittering pearls.

The last two lines are the conclusion of the poem. Rückert covers his poem with two last lines, the seventh and eighth lines: “If you love for the sake of love alone, O yes then, love me!” and ”Love me as I love you-forever!” Here, another conditional utterance used to depict what the speaker’s want, which is being love for of the love itself, not for the beauty, youth, or wealth that will only last temporarily before fading, because love will never fade, but will be everlasting, as she loves him, forever. Rückert impliedly portrays with a visual imagery when a young beautiful lady after her long apprehension, come to a place where a young man stood, she smiled, and embrace him.

How is your interpretation?