Journal 3: “it may not always be so; and i say” Literary Critic

In “it may not always be so; and i say,” E.E. Commings conveys the warning a man gives to his lover about betrayal. The poem begins with speaker giving his lover a warning that if she betrays him and leaves him he wants to know. Even though he refuses to see his lover with another man in the end he realized that to see her happy he will resign his love for her. The speaker says in the first stanza “that i may go unto him, and take his hands, saying, Accept all happiness from me.” This shows that love is more than about the trust and relationship of two people but ultimately about the sacrifices one is willing to do for others. It is more painful to retain a person that does not love you than to let them go. Throughout the poem the speaker conveys the jealousy he feels to see another man touching his lover. But in the middle of the poem he resigns when he realizes that if he loves his lover, he would rather see her happy with another man, thus, he says that he is willing to give her up. Through the use of end rhyme and punctuation, E.E. Cummings is able to emphasize his message of the hostility love can create.
The end rhyme in this poem serves to emphasize keywords that convey the main idea of the poet wants to get across. For example, in the first stanza the words (say, touch, clutch, away, lay, such, overmuch, and bay) at the end of the lines reveal that the man is afraid of betrayal. The words that have a rhyme of “ay” convey that the man is nothing without her while the words with the rhyme of “uch” what he needs of her. The punctuation also contribute to the main message of the poem by setting a contrast that makes the reader think about what love can do to us. The poem only has two periods to separate everything into two ideas which are a cause and effect. The first period appear is placed after he explains his fears of losing her to another man. Before the second period, the poet reveals to his lover that he will resign to let her be happy.