‘More Strong Than Time’ is not your typical love poem. Penned by the Romantic writer Victor Hugo it’s a poem that begins by reveling in the love experienced by its rapt speaker, who uses lustrous and floral imagery to symbolize their love’s exceptional radiance.
But that love is more than just a warmth they find themselves surrounded by — it’s also a source of revitalizing strength. One that gives the speaker a newfound courage and daring to challenge time and its ability to erode away life.
More Strong Than Time Victor HugoSince I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;Since it was given to me to hear on happy while,The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream,Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days;I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours,Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old,Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spillThe cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill,My soul more love than you can make my soul forget
Summary
‘More Strong Than Time’ by Victor Hugo is a poem that asserts love outlasts time.
‘More Strong Than Time’ is a unique love poem — one that begins with a profession and description of intense love — but ends in an ardent challenge and declaration. As the title lucidly asserts, the speaker believes the love shared between them and their beloved is far stronger than such forces as the flow of time.
The first three stanzas illustrate this love via various images and examples of figurative language, which serve to emphasize the unity and closeness between the two lovers. Their bond was made profoundly sturdy because of their intimacy and openness with one another.
The speaker emphasizes the potent ways their life has been altered thanks to the arrival of this person and their love for each other — and one of those changes involves their perception of time. No longer do they fear its ceaseless movement or the prospect of age and death.
Instead, they take heart in the comforting presence of their lover in life and the knowledge that nothing can remove the memory of their love from their soul.
Structure and Form
‘More Strong Than Time’ is comprised of five quatrains with a rhyme scheme of ‘ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ.’ Most of the lines in the poem are also end-stopped and contain the use of caesura. This specific structure lends a feeling of continuity and rhythmic beauty to the poem. They are also bolstered by the use of the literary devices below.
Literary Devices
‘More Strong Than Time’ uses a number of metaphors: “I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet” (1); “One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold” (16); “My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill” (19). There are also examples of personification: “Your heart spoke all its mysteries” (6). As well as the symbolism of the rose for the speaker’s love.
Hugo also employs a variety of imagery: visual imagery: “I my pallid face between your hands have laid” (2); olfactory imagery, “perfume rare” (4); and auditory imagery, “to hear on happy while, / The words” (5-6).
Detailed Analysis
Stanza One
Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;
In the first stanza of ‘More Strong Than Time,’ the speaker begins by describing their deep and intense feelings for their beloved. The first three lines use figurative language and imagery to illustrate the levels of intimacy experienced between the two lovers. “Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet” (1), the speaker explains, using metaphor to compare their sensual familiarity to the act of drinking.
Metaphor appears again two lines later when the speaker compares their lover’s soul to a flower whose “bloom” (3) has inspired them; to do or think what is still ambiguous, though it will become clear in the preceding stanzas.
Stanza Two
Since it was given to me to hear on happy while,
The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,
Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;
Stanza two of ‘More Strong Than Time’ continues the speaker’s reverent verse about their beloved and the positive ways their love has influenced their life. Personification is used to describe the “words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries” (6), which further underscores the profound intimacy shared between the two.
This is further punctuated by the imagery given in the next line, which sees the speaker describing moments in which they’ve seen their lover “weep” and “smile” (7). Revealing that they’ve remained close in both times of sorrow and joy.
The synchrony of the stanza’s last two images — which pair up the lovers’ lips and eyes — emphasizes the strength of their unity within their relationship. The first half of the image underscores their physical intimacy, and the second half their emotional intimacy.
Stanza Three
Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime’s stream,
Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days;
The third stanza of ‘More Strong Than Time’ continues the use of anaphora (“Since I have”) and offers two more compelling pieces of figurative language to describe the love shared between the speaker and their beloved. The first compares their presence to that of a “ray, a single ray, or your star” (10) that beams down upon their forehead like a radiant sun. This metaphor not only characterizes their love as a source of warmth and light but also as heavenly and celestial.
The last two lines of the stanza create a vision of the speaker’s life as a literal stream of water, its current ceaselessly moving forward, until one day it feels the fall (an example of personification) of “one rose petal” (12).
The rose petal symbolizing not just the arrival of their lover, sending tender ripples reverberating through their life, but also the perpetuity of their own beauty in the eyes of the speaker. The phrase “roses of your days” (12) seemingly implies that all of their days are rose-abundant and, therefore, eternally beautiful.
Stanza Four
I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours,
Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old,
Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.
Stanza five of ‘More Strong Than Time’ ends the use of anaphora by finally revealing what all this gushing love has done to the speaker. Essentially, as the title alludes, the speaker’s proximity to such love has made them entirely unafraid of time’s passage. “I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours / Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old” (13-14), the speaker asserts.
This stanza also sees a shift in the subject as the speaker is no longer addressing their lover but rather a time personified. In a powerful address, they command time to return to the “dark abysm with all your fading flowers” (15), an image that entwines time with death as well. Once again, returning to the image of a rose, the speaker explains that time cannot “pluck” the one flower that matters: the one “within my heart I hold” (16), which symbolizes the love they’ve experienced from their sweetheart.
Stanza Five
Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;
My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget
The final stanza of ‘More Strong Than Time’ continues to address time with this challenging tone. The speaker anthropomorphizes time, giving it “flying wings” with which to “smite” (17), once more entangling it with the arrival of death. But even with such power, the speaker promises that it’s incapable of spilling their “cup fulfilled of love” (18), the same cup the speaker uses as part of their metaphor in the first stanza.
Another metaphor paints the argument in starker images: the speaker uses fire to symbolize the intensity of their love, which they possess far more of that time “can frost to chill” (19). The last line of the poem reveals that the speaker understands that love cannot truly defy death or time in the literal sense — but it cannot be eradicated by it either.
Yet no matter what happens, the speaker makes it clear that their soul has been forever changed by the experience of such love and, therefore, could never be made to forget it.
FAQs
The poem’s theme is best summed up by its title. Essentially, the speaker is trying to convey the intensity of their love and the revelation it’s offered them. As they’re no longer bothered by a fear of time and death. Instead, all those existential anxieties have been alleviated to the point of instilling a certain boldness in the speaker. To them, the love they’ve experienced cannot be taken away even by such forces as time.
A change in subject occurs in the fourth stanza and can be somewhat confounding upon a first read-through. In the last two stanzas, the speaker’s attention turns directly toward time itself, declaring that it does not have the power to whither away at the love in its heart.
Hugo no doubt wrote the poem as a profound and intense expression of love. A Romantic poet, through and through, he sought to convey all the passionate variances of human emotion and did so ardently. This poem underscores his firm appeal to the power of love to resist and endure all forces.
What greater defiance is there against time than to never age? Of course, the speaker doesn’t literally mean that love has stalled the effects of time and given them eternal youthfulness. Instead, the line suggests the revitalizing power of love and that time’s hold over the individual fades when you find yourself consumed by an emotion so everlasting.
Similar Poems
- ‘My Fancy’ by Lewis Caroll – this poem attempts to articulate all the complex and contradictory feelings that can embody love.
- ‘My True Love Hath My Heart’ by Philip Sidney – this poem captures the moment two people fall irrevocably in love and the entanglement of hearts that ensues.
- ‘Can life be a blessing’ by John Dryden – this poem seeks to answer whether the merits of love in the face of possible heartache.
