Why Love Song?

I initially had a problem with this being entitled a love song. Where is the love? Where? Well. It's in the use of lyric. It's a poem. As Dr. Schuler said, people use poetry when they're in love. So what's our voice in love with? I believe this poem his swan song, his eulogy, his ode to the Golden Age. The essence of whimsy that belongs to the romanticized past. He's using a lot of imagery that seems to be taken from war time. e. g. Yellow fog. And I think he's using that to mourn what the war ripped him from. Literarily speaking, we've left behind the romantic transcendentals. "Go forth and commune with nature." In world war 1 nature and humanity committed irreparable crimes against each other. The last image we have is that of a mermaid. Connected through the imagery of combing. (Hair vs wave crests) Mermaids are half-human, half-nature. His inclusion of them randomly at the end shows his envy of those oblivious to the true crimes he is experiencing. When he speaks of the women talking of Michelangelo, it comes across disdainfully. Women couldn't fight in the war. They know we lost our golden ages past. But they didn't see it ripped away from humanity by trenches and biological warfare. He hates their oblivion but he wants it desperately for himself. Don't wake him from his journeys with the sea maidens. They're the only thing that help him sleep at night.

I commented on Abbie George's post.