A Different View of Ash

Patience Worth (1883-1937)

 

Who Said That Love Was Fire?

Who said that love was fire?
I know that love is ash.
It is the thing which remains
When the fire is spent,
The holy essence of experience.

I find this poem very interesting.  It is so short, but it reveals a truth that I do not think people tend to recognize on a daily basis.  This short poem gives ash a new meaning, a different view.  At least it does for me.  A popular image and comparison of love has always been fire.  You can find love being compared to fire and a flame in many modern works of literature.  You can also find love being compared to an everlasting fire in the works of Shakespeare.  Patience Worth gives us a new angle in which to look at love.  Fire is bright, full of heat, color, and life.  Ash is grey, gritty, and usually depressing.  But in reality, it is more realistic to compare love to ash than to fire.  Love does not always stay so alive and heated like a fire, and that feeling does not always mean love.  Also, no fire burns forever, but love can last forever.  Worth compares ash to an experienced love.  Ash is what prevails after a fire has burned out.  Experience is what makes love last, not the flame.  When you continue to love someone past the flame stage is when you gain the experience of truly loving someone. I can believe that love lasts with experience.  Ash is the result of a fire dying out, so the ash is the remains of the fire.  For love, the ash is the love that is present and obtained when the initial attraction that originally brought two people is passed.  I just think this is an uncommon and refreshing image of love.  Normally, ash would not appeal to a person's senses enough to compare it to something as sensational and extraordinary as love, but the way Worth presents the comparison is quite pleasing.  Comparing love to the experienced ash of a dwindled fire is a powerful image.  This poem caught my attention even though it is very short because it contains a new way to view love that is not popularized and overused.