The Look

The Look
Strephon kissed me in the spring,Robin in the fall,But Colin only looked at meAnd never kissed at all.
Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,Robin's lost in play,But the kiss in Colin's eyesHaunts me night and day.
-- Sara Teasdale

Interpreting poems has always been a struggle for me. No matter how hard I try to force myself to like it, I just simply find no interest in it. But I know it doesn’t have to be like that because by simply doing it could already help me in many ways.

Honestly speaking, the poem “The Look” gave me a long time reading it over and over again. This is to be able to completely understand what it was suppose to mean. Though I am not sure if I have really completely understood the poem, this is how I interpret it anyway…

In the poem, we could see that the writer mentioned three names – Strephon, Robin and Colin. I do not really know if these names are just mere creations or these had really historical meaning or something. I just presume that these men are admirers or suitors of the writer.
The writer started the poem by telling us that Strephon and Robin kissed her in different seasons, particularly in the spring and in the fall, and that it was only Colin who did not kiss her but instead gave a look. She suddenly confesses that the kiss of Strephon was lost in jest. Meaning, it was just done in a playful joking manner. She also admitted that the kiss of Robin was lost in play. What she meant here was that it was just done for fun, not earnestly.
We could observe that even if Colin did not give her a kiss, the kiss in his eyes is the one that haunts her night and day.

What I thought about this poem is that it talks about sincerity in loving. This is what people who are in love lack. It is very easy for us to say “I love you” when we do not even mean it in the first place. It could also be very easy to show a person how we love them. We oftentimes do this by giving a person a hug or even a kiss. But the big question is, is there really sincerity in doing this?

Love could actually be expressed in many ways. It could be through the words that come out of our mouth or through the actions that we show. I could even remember a quote saying that “Works, not words, are the proof of love.” Probably, the writer associates this with “Actions speak louder than words.” True it may seem, we could express by using non-verbal communication. One type of non-verbal communication is the eye behavior. The way we look a person could actually mean something.

One of the things that I have learned during our retreat was that we could actually show love by just looking at a person. Now I know what the poem was really trying to tell. That Colin’s love was the most sincere among the others basing on how the writer said it. And that he also had respect for the lady because he did give a kiss just for the sake of giving it unlike the other guys.
We should always remember that we do not really need to do such big things just to impress a person because the person that we are trying to communicate could just get it through the way we look.