By Siarra Hoover

“I Thank You” 

I thank you, kind and best beloved friend,
With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister,
When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her,
Less for the gifts than for the love you send,
Less for the flowers, than what the flowers convey;
If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly,
And not unto myself ascribe, unduly,
Things which you neither meant nor wished to say,
Oh! Tell me, is the hope then all misplaced?
And am I flattered by my own affection?
But in your beauteous gift, methought I traced
Something above a short-lived predilection,
And which, for that I know no dearer name,
I designate as love, without love’s flame.

— Henry Timrod 

Do you remember growing up with your childhood best friend? In elementary school, the dynamic duo would spend all of their free time together doing who knows what. The two of you would be running around creating havoc for your parents, making memories, and just loving life. You tell each other that you are going to be best friends forever.. Before you know it, it’s time to move to middle school and you are worried about losing your childhood best friend to someone else. Personally, I was terrified of losing my best friend, Payton. However, as we went through middle school, our friendship only grew stronger by creating new memories. We were glued to each other’s side. Then, it was time to transition to the high school and the same pattern repeated. But high school was the greatest four years of our friendship. We were still glued to each other’s side; however, it was a different type of friendship. Instead of just having a companion, we truly learned to be thankful for each other and our relationship. We felt what it is like to truly love a friend, but the love was platonic because we weren’t in a romantic relationship. To this day, even though we are over 300 miles apart, we still mean the world to each other and love our time together. Overall, I became fond of this poem because I feel that I can understand the platonic love between two friends because of my personal experiences with Payton.

Henry Timrod receives flowers from a friend, so he writes this sonnet to thank his friend for them. In his poem, “I Thank You”, Timrod not only gives thanks to his friend for the flowers but also thanks said person for being his friend. Timrod goes on to discuss the meanings of the flowers and the friendship between Timrod and the unnamed friend. He becomes very excited about the symbolism and meanings between the flowers and friendship. After understanding the meanings and getting excited, he starts to wonder if he read too much into the gift of flowers and friendship. He thinks that his friendship may not be as strong as he made it to be. Furthermore, he believes that he may have looked too much into the gift. He wonders if the gift was supposed to show that the unnamed friend was just a nice person rather than a gift of friendship. Now, he has a great sense of doubt and anxiety about the friendship that he thought was strong as ever and the gift of flowers. He traces back through their story of the friendship and soon realizes that he wasn’t looking too much into the friendship. It was as strong as Timrod thought it was. Then, Timrod creates the idea that friendship is “love, without love’s flame.” This means that friendship is a strong love without the passionate flame of love. Or, there is no “flame of friendship”. It is true love but is still platonic. Furthermore, the speaker is Henry Timrod and his addressee is his unnamed friend, who he receives flowers from. In general, Timrod’s poem tells the story of his friendship with a strong, but platonic, love.

Timrod explores his ideas of friendship through several symbols. First, the simple gift of flowers is turned into a symbol of friendship. Henry Timrod accepts the flowers happily as said symbol because he believes it shows how strong their friendship is. Second, “love’s flame” is used to show similar meanings to a fire. The flame symbolizes passion and the fire would create a flame of friendship instead of a passionate love. Furthermore, both symbols help in the symbolization of friendship. This symbolism of the flowers is developed through the ‘tentacular’ structure by the speaker of the poem, Henry Timrod, analyzing the meaning of the gift of flowers. He believed the gift showed how strong their friendship truly was. Then, he wondered if he was overthinking the friendship. This ‘tentacular’ structure led to the ‘tentacular’ structure of the symbolism for “love’s flame”. The structure for “love’s flame” consists of the discussed structure for the flowers. However, the structure of the “love’s flame” is the ending of the structure for the flowers. The last couple lines of the poem with “love’s flame” reaffirms that Timrod didn’t overthink the meaning of the flowers. Rather, he confirms that his friendship is strong like he thought. This may be confusing, but in reality, the ‘tentacular’ structures for the symbolism overlaps in the poem. Furthermore, these two images could also be defined as a ‘Not X, but Y’ structure. So, it’s not love’s flame but is instead a passionate friendship. The last line of the poem, “love without love’s flame”, shows an ‘X, without Y’ structure. Also, Timrod might think that affection (gifts and flowers) is more of romantic love. So, the “tentacles” of the flowers and flames have a lot of symbolic significance in each other and can be very confusing. The symbolism in this poem clearly explores the use of the theme of friendship. Obviously, the symbols are centered around the concept of friendship and the love that is shared between two friends. Overall, the symbolism is centered around friendship and explores the main concept well.

Like flowers and flames, sonnets tend to be associated with romantic love, but Timrod decided not to go in that direction. Henry Timrod’s poem, “I Thank You”, is a sonnet, which means it is a 14-line poem. The poem has three quatrains, which are four-line sections from the poem. Then, the poem ends in a couplet, which are the last two lines of the poem. Also, the poem has rhyming in the quatrains. Some examples include ‘affection’ and ‘predilection’, ‘misplaced’ and ‘traced’, ‘truly’ and ‘unduly’, and ‘convey’ and ‘say’. Although the form of this sonnet matches that of a traditional sonnet, the theme of the poem doesn’t exactly match that of a traditional sonnet. The difference is in the content of the poem. A traditional sonnet exploits the concept of romantic love. Whereas, this poem discusses more of a friendship and the platonic love that it carries with it. Typically, a sonnet addresses the twists and turns of romantic love, good and bad. Timrod’s poem discusses a strong, healthy friendship with a steady platonic love instead of a romantic love. Furthermore, a sonnet works a bit differently when describing friendship because the love in a friendship is completely different than the love in a romantic relationship. The love in a friendship consists of two caring people that truly want the best for the other person, but there is no physical attraction. The affection that they give each other would be much simpler with smaller, but nice gestures. Whereas, the love in a romantic relationship consists of the same two caring people, but those people share a physical attraction. The affection that a romantic couple shares could be a lot more intense and heartfelt with bigger gestures. So, the difference in love and or content makes the sonnet work slightly different. Although the content of the poem doesn’t match the meaning of a traditional sonnet, the form still works for the meaning of friendship and platonic love. 

Love and friendship are discussed frequently in our everyday lives. Honestly, how many times a day do you tell someone that you love them? Personally, I say it quite frequently to my friends and family. Love tends to be overlooked in our culture as something simple and easy going. People don’t seem to understand how strong a feeling love is. Romantic love and platonic love are both overlooked, not just one. Timrod’s poem can easily show people in our culture that love is much more complicated than people make it out to be. In the poem, Timrod questioned if he thought the love was stronger than it was. Then, he realized that he was overthinking a simple concept and it really was strong. Also, friendship is overlooked as something small and meaningless. Timrod discusses his anxiety about the strength of his friendship with his unnamed friend. In real life, friendships come with a lot of thought and anxiety about the different situations that take place between the two friends. Once again, Timrod realizes that he wasn’t overthinking or having too much anxiety about it. He realizes that a strong friendship does come with a lot of anxiety. Overall, this poem could easily be connected to the idea that people underemphasize love and friendships. People in our culture should learn that love and friendship are truly confusing and emotion heavy.

Like I said earlier, we all have best friends, both new and old friends. This poem is not only meaningful to me and my friendships, but your friendships too. Remember to not take romantic love or love from a friendship for granted. It’s not an easy thing to deal with and should be taken with more caution. Read this poem and think about the path of thought Henry Timrod went down for the sake of his friendship with the unnamed friend.